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League says it has no access to evidence, won’t give wide receiver a suspension over child abuse claims
The NFL has chosen not to suspend Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill after a woman identified as his fiancée accused him of hitting their 3-year-old son earlier this year.
The league said that it did not have access to information gathered in court proceedings, and all law enforcement records have been sealed. Hill was never charged in the case because prosecutors in Johnson County, outside Kansas City, said they did not have enough evidence.
“Similarly, based on the evidence presently available, the NFL cannot conclude that Mr. Hill violated the Personal Conduct Policy,” the league said in a statement released Friday.
Hill will be allowed to attend the Chiefs’ training camp, which begins next week, and participate in all club activities. He is required to submit to what the league called “clinical evaluation and therapeutic intervention.” The statement leaves the door open for consideration of a future penalty for Hill if more information becomes available from law enforcement agencies.
In April, Hill had agreed to stay away from the Chiefs while the NFL investigated the reported incident, which occurred in January. The team’s general manager, Brett Veach, said he was disturbed by an audio recording, in which Hill appeared to threaten his fiancée, Crystal Espinal. In the recording, Espinal says that their son repeatedly said, “Daddy did it.” Hill responds, “You need to be terrified of me, too.”
Still, police were unable to conclusively determine what had happened and did not charge Hill or his fiancée. The incident reportedly remains under investigation by the Kansas Department for Children and Families.
The decision not to suspend Hill was the latest test of the NFL’s enhanced policy against domestic violence. Since 2014, when former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was caught on video punching his then-fiancée, the league has relied on its own investigative department and rendered its own judgments and penalties instead of solely following the lead of law enforcement agencies and waiting for the crim
inal justice system to determine guilt or innocence first.
This has often led to lengthy investigations of varying quality and a variety of penalties that have vexed players and owners alike. In Hill’s case, Lisa Friel, who leads the league’s investigative unit that focuses on domestic violence, met with Hill for more than eight hours last month. She submitted a report to Commissioner Roger Goodell, and consulted with B. Todd Jones, the league’s chief disciplinary officer.
In other cases, the league has suspended players for events that were said to have occurred before they joined the NFL. Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, for instance, was given a six-game suspension over accusations of domestic violence made by a former girlfriend in July 2016, before Elliott’s rookie season.
This year, Goodell fined Washington Redskins linebacker Reuben Foster the equivalent of two game checks after a domestic violence charge against him had been dropped.
Hill was arrested on domestic violence charges in 2014 while he was at Oklahoma State, and he pleaded guilty to assaulting and choking Espinal, who was eight weeks pregnant at the time. He received three years’ probation.