Scottie Scheffler’s lawyer insists the world No 1 will go to trial to clear his name if charges of assaulting a police officer are not dropped.
The American, who made a dreadful start to his third round at the US PGA Championship on Saturday, is facing four charges over the extraordinary scenes that preceded play on Friday,
with the most serious being the second-degree assault of a police officer.
Scheffler is confident the matter will be resolved ‘fairly quickly’ ahead of his scheduled arraignment in a Louisville court on Tuesday, but his legal team are adamant
that will not involve accepting a plea deal, saying they will challenge any effort to apportion blame on the golfer over the early-hours episode.
Scheffler’s lawyer Steve Romines said: ‘They will either be dropped or we will go to trial, because Scottie didn’t do anything wrong. So we’re not interested in any sort of settlement negotiations or anything like that. It was just a big miscommunication.’
The 27-year-old was accused of failing to stop for police as he attempted to gain entry to Valhalla Golf Club at a point when they were managing traffic in the wake of a fatal collision between a bus and a member of the tournament’s security staff, John Mills.
He said: ‘There had been a traffic fatality down the road and so there were different traffic directions going on and traffic control officers were advising different things. Scottie was advised by one officer to go around the traffic and turn left into the facility.
‘But the officer who charged him obviously didn’t know that. So, that’s where the miscommunication occurred.
‘It was kind of a perfect storm. One thing needs to be clear — he didn’t drive through any accident scene, or through any investigation. None of that happened.’
The charges against Scheffler were listed by local police as second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer.
It remains to be seen if the charges will be dropped, though it is telling that the mayor of Louisville, Craig Greenberg, has stated there was no body-cam footage leading up to the 6.01am arrest.
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Source: The Wall Street Journal
