Whitehead: ’Boys called me a ‘liar’
A day after Lucky Whitehead was released by the Cowboys, the wide receiver had his arrest warrant rescinded — police now say they had the wrong guy. And Whitehead feels “blindsided” by his former team for not letting him clear his name. News broke Monday that there was a warrant issued for Whitehead’s arrest for failing to appear in court on July 6 for a larceny charge related to a June 22 shoplifting arrest in Virginia. On Tuesday, the Prince William County Police Department said in a statement that it’s “confident that the man charged with petit larceny, and who is subsequently being sought on an active warrant for failure to appear in court, is not Lucky Whitehead of the Dallas Cowboys.” The man who was arrested at the Wawa convenience store wasn’t carrying any identification at the time, but he provided Whitehead’s full name, date of birth and social security number, police said. Officers then checked the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles database to get a picture, and they believed the man in custody matched the image. “The police department regrets the impact these events had on Mr. Whitehead and his family,” the statement said. However, the Cowboys are standing by their choice to release him. “We’ve made a decision and we’re moving on,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said after practice Tuesday. Whitehead told the Dallas Morning News that he felt “blindsided” by the entire situation and did not want to sugar coat anything: “I was pretty much being called a liar” by the Cowboys. While at training camp on Monday, Whitehead said he didn’t know what was going on when asked about the larceny charge. Shortly afterward, he was whisked away by the team. The Cowboys cut him hours later.
“I didn’t know about a warrant that came about in the first place. Clearly because I wasn’t the person arrested,” Whitehead explained. “The head person [in the Cowboys organization] I told, no one backed me up. No one had my back in the whole situation. I knew about it at what? 12:45. By 2:30 I’m released.”
Whitehead’s agent, David Rich, had said Monday the crime was a case of mistaken identity, adding that his client wasn’t in Virginia at the time of the incident but in Dallas.
Whitehead later released a statement to CowboysHQ.com, denying that he’d been arrested for shoplifting.
“I don’t know who got arrested in Virginia. But it wasn’t me. I NEVER once had an altercation with the cops. And come to find out, this happened, they say, at 1:34 a.m. at a Wawa in Woodbridge, Virginia (on the day) that I was in Dallas until 11:20 a.m,” he said.