The football player formerly known as Pacman has done a decent job of staying out of trouble in recent years.
That ended Thursday, with an incident in a Cincinnati bar that will result in Jones turning himself in to authorities later today.
Bengals cornerback Adam Jones broke the news of his predicament on Twitter: “Just got arrested for protecting myself, I will not let this break me or change what I have work so hard for. . . .”
His agent, Peter Schaffer, told PFT by phone that Jones was at a bar after a Reds game. Jones was approached by two women that he deemed to be intoxicated, and they wanted to take a picture with him. Jones declined.
After he declined, one of them threw a beer bottle at him, striking his head from point blank range. So he turned and slapped her and said, “What are your doing? Stop it!”
Schaffer says that he has spoken to multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate Jones’ version of the events. Schaffer also says that the police have spoken to none of the witnesses, other than the two women.
“If it was anybody other than Adam Jones, they would have investigated it,” Schaffer said of the police. “If it was anybody other than Adam Jones, they wouldn’t have arrested him.”
We haven’t researched Ohio law on self-defense, so we don’t know whether a retaliatory slap after being struck by an object is permissible. Still, if Jones’ version is accurate, he wasn’t the aggressor. At a minimum, the woman who threw the bottle also should be charged.
Jones, a first-round pick of the Titans in 2005, had multiple brushes with the law early in his career. Since serving a one-year suspension from 2007 to 2008, he largely has remained out of trouble.