Jon Jones Cleared of Charges Following February Incident
UFC heavyweight ex-champion Jon Jones has had all charges against him dismissed related to an incident that occurred in February. Initially, Jones was accused of leaving the scene of an accident and threatening a police officer. The Bernalillo County, New Mexico, district attorney’s office decided to drop all charges on Tuesday, arguing that they had “reason to believe that the defendant’s alibi defense is credible.” An unusual detail was that the charges were filed twice against Jones due to an “administrative error,” resulting 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, Jones’ hometown. Police responded to the scene where they found a semi-nude woman inside the vehicle, who claimed that Jones was driving and had left. Body camera footage showed the woman called a man she said was Jones, who then made verbal threats to the officer present. 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. He was arrested and charged with a felony for hit-and-run in 2015, after leaving the scene of an accident 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 considered one of the best fighters of all time, Jones retired from competition earlier this year, instead of trying to unify his heavyweight title against interim champion Tom Aspinall. However, he quickly announced his intention to come out of retirement in the hope of competing at the UFC event planned at the White House next July.I want to start by thanking the prosecution 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
