The following is breaking news - and was posted on The Plain Dealer’s website
Ohio State University basketball player David Lighty and two of his former teammates from Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School pleaded guilty today to charges related to them shooting a jogger with a toy BB gun that fired plastic pellets.
Lighty fired the shot that pelted St. Joseph alumnus James Nugent in the lower back on July 7, 2006. Nugent yelped and hopped in surprise. Lighty and pals Jimmy McLeod and Darryl Rushton, perched in the athletic-field bleachers scores of feet away, doubled over in hilarity.
Nugent, 55, told Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Kenneth Callahan he felt a sting, then heard, “I hit him! I hit him!”
“They laughed — they just thought it was a joke,” Nugent recalled.
Also from CBS Sportsline.com wire reports
CLEVELAND — Ohio State basketball player David Lighty pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge and was fined $250 in a case involving a jogger who was shot with a BB gun last year.
Two of Lighty’s former teammates at Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School in Cleveland also entered pleas in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas on Tuesday. Jimmy McLeod and Darryl Rushton each were fined $100 after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct, a minor misdemeanor.
James Nugent, 55, was not seriously hurt last June when he was hit in the back by at least one plastic BB while jogging on the high school track. In Cleveland, BB and pellet guns are considered firearms and it is illegal to have them in public places.
Nugent said Tuesday he had forgiven the 19-year-old defendants and thought the sentences handed down by Judge Kenneth Callahan were fair.
After he was sentenced, Lighty shook Nugent’s hand. Lighty told the judge he wanted to apologize “to Mr. Nugent, to my family, my community and my school.”
Lighty started seven games last season for the Buckeyes, who set a school record for victories at 35-4. Ohio State reached the national championship game before losing to defending champion Florida.
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By Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio State basketball player David Lighty pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was fined $250 in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court today for shooting a Cleveland man in the back with a plastic pellet gun last year.
Two co-defendants, Darryl Rushton and Jimmy McLeod, former teammates of Lighty’s at Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in connection with the incident and were fined $100 apiece, a spokesperson for the county prosecutor said.
The three, all 19, were arrested June 7, 2006, after James Nugent, 56, of Cleveland, told police he was jogging around the high school’s track “when he felt an object strike him in his back. He then heard the three males laughing and say, ‘We hit him,’” according to a police report.
Nugent told The Dispatch in a subsequent interview that the three were sitting on bleachers and “had this little toy gun (that) shoots these little plastic pellets. When I jogged by, one of them shot me in the back. I heard a pop and then felt a little sting in my back.”
Airguns were confiscated from each of the three after the incident, according to the police report.
Nugent said he called police on his cell phone because he was wary of confronting the three and because a 13-year-old Cleveland boy died in 2001 after being shot in the back with a BB fired by an air rifle.
“I thought if somebody’s running around with these pellet or BB guns, somebody could get killed,” Nugent said.
In 2002, Cleveland lawmakers reclassified BB and pellet guns as firearms and prohibited them in public places. Ohio law does not consider them firearms.
Lighty, a member of Ohio State coach Thad Matta’s acclaimed “Thad Five” recruiting class in 2006, helped the Buckeyes reach the NCAA championship game as a freshman. He played in all 39 games, averaged 3.7 points and was one of the team’s best defenders.
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