WR Demas investigated for another domestic incident
COLLEGE STATION — Demond Demas, the Texas A&M receiver arrested last week on a charge of assault, is the subject of an open investigation from an incident with another girlfriend.
Brianna Turk, a student at Prairie View and a girlfriend of Demas’ since they attended Tomball High School, said Demas slapped her and choked her several times during a six-month period starting in the summer of 2020.
The Brazos County district attorney’s office declined to pursue charges at that time, citing a lack of overall evidence and a “she said/he said” circumstance, a law enforcement official said.
The case remains open with the university police department and a school investigation is ongoing under Title IX, a federal law that tries to curtail campus violence and sex-based discrimination at any school that receives money from the federal government.
Houston attorney Tony Buzbee is representing Demas and said he would not able to comment on Turk’s claims because he was not aware of the details.
Demas, one of the nation’s top high school recruits in the class of 2020, was arrested last week on a charge of assault from an incident the weekend of Feb. 26-27.
Turk, her voice shaking, spoke publicly for the first time about what happened to her in 2020.
“He started to choke me,” Turk said. “At that point I had to take my hands off my face, because I was trying to grab his hands to make him let me go. I told him, ‘I can’t breathe!’ He let go for a split second, and I thought that was the end of it. But then he started choking me again, and I was screaming for him to get off me.
“He eventually let me go, and when he did I crawled into the bathroom and started bawling.”
Turk reported Demas’s alleged multiple assaults to A&M police in November 2020.
A little more than a year ago, Turk’s mother, Iesha Turk, tried
reaching out to the A&M football program to discuss Demas’ alleged abuse of her daughter. She specifically tried contacting Dameyune Craig, who is Demas’ position coach.
Brianna said Craig had shown up to Demas’ apartment in November 2020 to visit with Demas about the receiver leaving an Aggies practice early and saying he intended to transfer because of lack of playing time.
After Craig left, Brianna said Demas abused her worse than before — including the choking and leaving her with a scratched, bloody leg and a black eye.
“No one ever reached out (from A&M football), and I had sent them a picture of her (bruised) face,” Iesha Turk said. “I have never heard back from anyone from the football staff.”
An A&M official said after the arrest that coach Jimbo Fisher “is prohibited from getting involved until the school’s Title IX office directs him to” — why there was no reply from the coaching staff to the mother of the earlier alleged victim.
“Our Title IX office handles all of that, but you don’t ever want guys to make mistakes,” Fisher
said last week when asked about Demas’ arrest. “You don’t ever want guys to make those mistakes — not for themselves but for the other people they make those mistakes to.
“We won’t ever condone that and you don’t ever condone that, but our Title IX office handles that, and it’s out of our hands.”
Demas had been suspended from A&M a couple of weeks ago because he was not attending class. The suspension was unrelated to the assault cases, an official said.
Brianna Turk met Demas through a mutual friend at Tomball High, where they were both students, in January 2019 and they began dating a month later.
“I just liked his personality, and we hit it off as soon as we met,” Turk said. “There was little stuff (early on) that he would blow out of proportion or blow up at me about. There was one particular incident in our school cafeteria in front of our friends when he was yelling and cussing at me.”
Turk said she mostly ignored the early signs.
“I just didn’t see it the way everybody else saw it,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, he’s just mad right now … he’ll get over it. He just acts this way sometimes.’ A lot of people around me were telling me it would turn into a bad situation,
but I didn’t see the signs.”
She said Demas hitting her did not start until they had been dating for more than a year — and the hitting started with pops to her mouth.
“The very first time I remember him slapping me in the mouth was upstairs in the movie room of his aunt’s house,” Turk said. “I said something ‘smart’ to him, and he doesn’t like it when I talk smart to him, and he just popped me in the mouth for it. I thought, ‘Where did that even come from?’ I was in shock.
“I told him, ‘You can’t do stuff like that because my parents have always told me little stuff turns into full-on abuse.’ He said, ‘You know I’d never really put my hands on you, right?’”
Turk recalled another time trying to style Demas’ hair at his apartment in College Station.
“I said to him, ‘Can you just turn your head so I can finish doing your hair?’” Turk said. “I said it in a tone that he didn’t like, and he just stared dead at me, and I already knew he was going to pop me in the mouth — I just knew it was coming.
“But this time he full-on slapped me across my face, and so hard it turned my face to the other side. I just sat there and cried and he apologized and said he was sorry and that he would
never do it again.”
In November 2020, Turk finally told her parents, Iesha and Brandon Turk, about the ongoing abuse and as she had been trying to put makeup on over the resulting black eye.
“I cried to Demond about wanting to tell my mom, because I tell her everything and this was the (worst) thing that had ever happened to me, and I couldn’t even tell her,” Turk said, her voice trembling. “He said I couldn’t tell anybody because he didn’t want to ‘lose everything.’ His aunt is a trauma therapist, and I told him she wouldn’t say anything to anybody about her nephew, and I could get the help I needed.
“But he said, ‘No, she’ll be mad at me! You can’t say anything.’”
When Turk finally told her parents, Iesha, who is a medical data specialist, insisted that Brianna file a report with College Station police. But Demas’ apartment complex is on A&M property, and so she had to go to university police to file a report, because it fell under their jurisdiction.
“At the time I wasn’t so forthcoming, I just didn’t want to deal with it,” Turk said. “I didn’t want to press charges … I was going through a lot and didn’t want anybody to know about it at the time — I just needed time.
“And Demond had been telling me that football is all he has, and if I went through with it he was going to lose everything. I didn’t know what to do.”
Added Iesha Turk: “I had to force her (to go the police) because she was trying to protect Demond so much. I had to back off, and let her do it in her own time. She eventually came around.”
Turk said she wanted her name made public to try and help others who are perhaps dealing with similar issues. Last August she received a phone call from a young woman she did not know but knew of — Demas’ latest girlfriend, with her own growing concerns about the football star.
“I told her about my black eye and she told me at that time, ‘All he’s done is mush me in my face,’ ” Turk said. “I told her that’s how it started off with me and him, that it gets progressively worse, and he’ll keep taking it further. I remember her telling me, ‘I’m sorry that happened to you — that should have never happened to you.’
“And that’s where our conversation left off. It was just like when people had tried to warn me about him. Until it happens to you, you don’t think it will.”