The woman who accused ASU linebacker Davon Durant of hitting and choking her told officers she didn't want him to get in trouble because of his status on the ASU football team, according to police.
A police report released Tuesday notes that the woman, Durant's girlfriend, refused medical attention and told a responding officer that she did not want to aid in prosecution or want Durant to get in trouble because he plays football for ASU.
Davon DurantOfficers responded to a passer-by's call about seeing a man hit a woman in a black Chevrolet Tahoe on the 500 block of East Apache Boulevard, according to the report. When officers arrived, they noticed a contusion and red mark under her left eye and abrasions and bruising consistent with finger marks on her neck, police reported.
The woman told police Durant was her boyfriend of one year who occasionally stays over at her apartment in the area, police reported. She said they had been arguing, she left to get food and then asked him to take the food from her car and then leave, according to the report.
The woman said she was afraid to get out of the car because she feared Durant would take her keys and other items because he had done that before, police reported.
Durant instead used her spare set of keys to climb in the car and told her that they needed to go up to the apartment so he could get some of his stuff, according to the report.
When she refused, Durant called her a stupid b----, hit her once in the face and grabbed her around the neck and squeezed, impeding her ability to breathe, police reported.
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When officers arrived, they stopped Durant as he exited the car with the woman's key's and wallet, police reported. One responding officer talked to the woman for about 15 minutes and reported that he noticed bruises developing on her neck.
The woman answered a domestic violence lethality assessment form, saying in response to a question about escalating violence that Durant "gets angry but this is the first time it has gotten physical."
Another officer speaking to Durant reported that he said they had argued but it was not physical, according to a police report.
Two people witnessed the incident, police reported. One told police he saw a man slam a woman's head into a dashboard of a vehicle twice, police reported. The second was in his apartment when he heard a woman scream, police reported. The two are roommates and called police, according to the report.
A detective assigned to the case received a phone call from the woman on March 9, two days later, after originally trying to contact her at her residence. When he asked about her choosing not to aid in prosecution, she said she had lied to police officers because she was very mad at Durant at the time, according to a police report.
The detective asked what she lied about, and the woman responded "all of it," according to the report. She said she, and not Durant, had a temper and that the marks on her neck were hickeys from sexual intercourse she and Durant engaged in before arguing in her car, police reported.
The woman told the detective that she made up her story out of "spite" and had called Durant's family to tell them he was in jail because she had lied, according to the report.
She also told the detective that witnesses may have come to inaccurate conclusions because she is a small woman and Durant is a 6-foot-2 football player, police reported.
The detective observed three half-inch red marks in a vertical line on the right side of her neck, which he says in the report resemble finger marks more than hickeys. He saw a small scab, which the woman described as an acne scar, on her forehead but saw no other indications that it was caused by acne, police reported.
Durant was suspended indefinitely by the ASU football team following his arrest. He did not appear for the first day of spring practice on Monday. Later that day, several media outlets began reporting that the woman reached out to them to recant her accusation.
Davon Durant poses with coach Todd Graham on National Signing Day on Feb. 4, 2015. (Screengrab by Justin Janssen/The State Press)At practice Tuesday, Graham said nothing had changed since the day before and that Durant was still suspended indefinitely.
"If you get arrested, you're going to be suspended indefinitely pending the process," Graham said. "We've just got to let the process play itself out. At the end of the day, what I tell guys is if you're guilty you're going to be punished. On the same hand, if you're innocent, you hope that that'll come out."
The two men who witnessed the incident have agreed to aid in prosecution and the case is moving forward in the Maricopa County Superior Court. Durant is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing to determine whether there's probable cause to try him at 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday.
Assistant sports editor Fabian Ardaya and editor-in-chief Julia Shumway contributed to this story.
Reach the sports editor at jmjanss1@asu.edu or follow @jjanssen11 on Twitter.
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