Jon Jones Cleared of Charges Following February Incident
Former UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones has seen all charges against him related to an incident in February dropped. The accusations included leaving the scene of an accident and threats to a police officer. The Bernalillo County, New Mexico, District Attorney’s Office made the decision to dismiss all charges on Tuesday. The justification is based on the belief that Jones’s alibi defense is credible. An unusual detail is that the charges were filed against Jones on two occasions due to an “administrative error.” This resulted in the dismissal of multiple cases related to the same incident.The charges against Jones stemmed from a car accident on February 21 in Albuquerque, his hometown. Police responded to a call about a semi-nude woman in the vehicle, who claimed that Jones was driving and had left. The body camera footage showed the woman calling a man who, according to her, was Jones, who then made verbal threats to the officer at the scene. In June, Jones appeared to implicate himself as the man on the phone when he wrote and then deleted from X: “Whoever was on the phone with me at first, their timestamp is different. By the time I was acting aggressive on the phone, it was a completely different conversation. I was already in my paranoid and defensive state.” Throughout his career, Jones has faced several legal issues. In 2015, he was arrested and charged with a felony for hit and run after leaving the scene of a crash that injured a 25-year-old pregnant woman. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to supervised probation. Additionally, Jones pleaded guilty to charges of driving while intoxicated in 2012 in New York and in 2020 in New Mexico. Widely regarded as one of the best fighters of all time, Jones retired from competition earlier this year rather than attempt to unify his heavyweight title against interim champion Tom Aspinall. However, he quickly announced his intention to come out of retirement in the hopes of competing at the UFC event planned at the White House next July.I want to start by thanking the district attorney’s office for carefully reviewing the facts and, ultimately, completely vindicating me. I have always believed in the importance of truth and justice, and I am grateful that the evidence spoke for itself. The simple fact is this: I was never there. I didn’t even leave my house that night, and all the evidence proved it.
Jon Jones on X
