EX-CMU football player faces rape charges
Incidents allegedly occurred in 2018, 2019
A former CMU football player charged in two alleged rapes that supposedly took place in 2018 and 2019 will stand trial on both.
Willie Lee Reid, 23, of Detroit, was formally bound over for trial on Monday for incidents that took place in 2018 and 2019. The earlier incident involved a fellow studentathlete who reported the incident in 2021 after seeing a Tweet that mentioned Reid.
The woman said Reid came to her dorm room on Oct. 31, 2018, to watch a movie. He began kissing her shortly after the movie started, she said, and while she reciprocated for a short time that she stopped when he started advancing things, sexually.
She said she repeatedly told him no, but he pushed her back and forced himself on her.
Reid was originally arrested and charged earlier this year on the incident that took place chronologically second, in the early hours of Sept. 15, 2019. Reid’s accuser said she met him at the Wayside, and toward the end of the evening they left.
She said she expected to go back to his apartment and that she would ultimately stay the night in a friend’s apartment in the same complex.
Instead, she found herself in the treeline between O’kellys, which adjoins Wayside, and Kellyshorts Stadium. She said that Reid forced himself on her there.
Reid’s attorney Blaine Bowne argued that the O’kellys incident was consensual, asking the woman a series of questions that suggested he believed that she might have taken an active role in instigating sex by leading Reid through the parking lot while the two held hands.
The woman said that wasn’t the case, and that at the end of it Reid left her in the trees laying on the ground, where she said she felt, “Sh**ty.”
The O’kellys incident was in
vestigated by the Mt. Pleasant Police Department; the student-athlete incident was investigated by CMU Police.
Bowne also asked the first accuser if she wanted to pursue a relationship with Reid. He also asked her if she’d previously called other men and asked them to come to her room.
Judge Sara Spencernoggle stopped that line of questioning flat, asking why he was asking.
“It goes to motive,” Bowne said.
Spencer-noggle told him it didn’t go to motive.
Reid was suspended from the CMU football team last season for unspecified off-field issues. Reid left CMU last June, said John Veilleux, a CMU spokesman.
Before he left, he played in the defensive secondary.
Reid was charged with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a 15-year felony. At the end of Monday’s hearing, Bowne argued that James Allen, prosecuting the case for the Isabella County Prosecutor’s Office, hadn’t produced sufficient evidence to establish coercion.
Spencer-noggle sided with Allen in binding the case over from district court to circuit court, which handles serious felonies.