Florida Safety and team captain, Tony Joiner, made arrangements with the owner of a towing company to pay a $76 towing charge for his girlfriends vehicle and to pick up the vehicle.
The early to bed, early to rise Joiner arrived at the impound lot at the sprightly hour of 5AM to pick up the vehicle and start his day.
Unfortunately, the owner of the impound lot was not as conscientious about starting his work day as early as Joiner likes to get up. No one was present to release the vehicle to Joiner.
The enterprising young go getter and team leader saw no need to waste economy of motion by making another trip later in the morning to the impound lot, and released the vehicle to himself.
So far, nothing alarming or unduly objectionable about his actions.
However, a 'witness' intruded upon Joiner's effort to comply with the arrangements he made with the lot owner. The 'witness' called the police to report that Joiner was breaking into the lot and attempting to vacate the premises with a vehicle.
Joiner, aware that the witness had called the police, didn't attempt to leave and stayed. Surely, in an effort to clear the situation up and put the police in contact with the owner.
The police cuffed and stuffed Joiner and quickly charged him with a felony before the situation could even be brought to the owners attention.
Certainly, with the current climate as a result of 7 arrests in the last year previous to this 'arrest' of Joiner, coach Urban Meyer would have to respond with instant and definitive action.
Meyer stripped Joiner of his team captaincy. And his status for the huge LSU game this Saturday is unclear.
"Coach Urban Meyer stripped Joiner of his captain's status and said the senior starter has not been cleared to play Saturday at top-ranked LSU. "
Suspending a player for a felony charge seems reasonable.
One would hope that the district attorney will be willing to listen to the owner of the lot and understand that this was not a felony offense.
That may well happen, but the problem is that it may not happen before the game.
So, Joiner may well pay a price for being the type of person that rises before the sun to start his daily tasks.
Clearly, this 'witness' was shocked to see a young Negro ambitiously starting his day at such an early hour.
One wonders if Tim Tebow would have found himself genuflecting before the police if he awoke at 5AM.
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4 comments:
i dunno...i bet the lot owner is saying this now because he doesn't want any trouble as a result...some bull gators probably got to him
Hopefully the lot owner holds his story. Brudduh got screwed. There's still lots of questions, but the fact that he stayed showed lots of character.
If anything this has just proven my long standing tradition of police interaction: when I see them I run like hell, slink away, or generally make myself scarce.
I hope you know, that Joiner got his captaincy back from Meyer by the way.
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