Jon Jones Cleared of Charges After Incident
Former UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones has been cleared of charges stemming from an incident in February, where he was accused of fleeing the scene of an accident and threatening a police officer. The Bernalillo County, New Mexico, District Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against Jones on Tuesday, arguing that they had “reason to believe that the defendant’s alibi defense is credible.” An unusual detail is 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 that occurred on February 21 in Albuquerque, Jones’ hometown. Police responded to a call about a semi-nude woman in the vehicle, who claimed that Jones was driving and had left. Body camera footage showed the woman later calling a man who, she said, 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.” Jones has faced several legal problems in his career. He was arrested and charged with a felony for hit and run in 2015, after fleeing 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. Jones also pleaded guilty to DWI charges in 2012 in New York and in 2020 in New Mexico. Widely regarded as the greatest fighter 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 prosecution for carefully reviewing the facts and, ultimately, vindicating me completely. 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
