MARSHAWN LYNCH:“If I had known at the time that my vehicle had struck a pedestrian, I would have stopped immediately.”
The Marshawn Lynch saga finally ends, with an apology and a fine
Buffalo Bills star running back also loses his driver’s license
Twenty-seven days after a luxury SUV struck a Canadian woman in the Chippewa entertainment district and kept going, Buffalo Bills running back Marshawn Lynch admitted he was behind the wheel.
“I didn’t know my car had hit anyone or anything,” Lynch mumbled to reporters Friday afternoon before heading into traffic court to plead guilty to a violation. “So I continued on my way home. I apologize to Ms. [Kimberly] Shpeley for any injuries she suffered.”
The hit-and-run had touched off a nearly monthlong debate about whether Lynch was behind the wheel and whether he was getting special treatment because he was a professional football player.
But it all ended with little fanfare in the drab confines of Hearing Room 1 in the Traffic Violation Bureau in Ellicott Square. Lynch was assessed a $100 fine, and his driver’s license and car registration were revoked.
Lynch, 22, hardly looked the part of the athlete superstar Friday. He came to his hearing dressed in a brown polo and baggy jeans, flanked by his lawyers. He kept a cell phone to his ear as he strode off the elevator toward the hearing room, although he didn’t seem to be talking to anyone.
Before a throng of reporters, he gave a short, seemingly rehearsed statement — less than a minute long. Speaking barely audibly and with a hangdog look on his face, he looked like a little boy being forced to apologize in front of his classroom.
His lawyers also issued a longer, written statement from Lynch in which he explained that early on the morning of May 31, he was making a left turn from Chippewa Street onto Delaware Avenue when he slowed down for a woman who was “dancing and spinning around in the sidewalk.” He proceeded through the crosswalk when he apparently hit Shpeley, who was behind the dancing woman.
Lynch said he had no idea he had hit the woman and drove to his home in Hamburg.
“At some point several police agencies arrived at my home and removed my car,” the written statement said. “I was informed that the police believed that my car had been involved in an accident . . . I was in disbelief over this claim and uncertain how to proceed.”
In the written statement, he then apologized to Shpeley, as well as the Buffalo Bills and his fans.
After speaking to the media, Lynch was whisked away by his lawyers to the hearing room, which was cleared for the big moment.
Administrative Law Judge Thomas L. Gagola took a moment to review the case. Buffalo Police Officer Allan Kasprzak gave testimony about the injuries suffered by Shpeley: a hip contusion and a four-centimeter- long laceration to her thigh that required seven stitches at Buffalo General Hospital.
Gagola asked Kasprzak if he considered the wounds suffered by the 27-year-old Minton, Ont., woman a “serious physical injury.”
“I would say no,” Kasprzak said.
It was a critical question. Had he answered yes, Lynch could have faced criminal charges. Had Lynch been charged with leaving the scene of a personal injury accident, a misdemeanor, he could have faced jail time.
But a plea agreement to the lesser charge had been worked out a week earlier with the Erie County district attorney’s office.
Gagola accepted Lynch’s plea of guilty to a single count of failure to exercise due care to avoid striking a pedestrian, a traffic violation.
Gagola fined Lynch the maximum allowable under the law, $100, plus a $50 surcharge.
Then, in a surprise move, Gagola also ruled that he was revoking Lynch’s New York State driver’s license and the registration to his Porsche Cayenne.
He cited Lynch’s “reckless disregard of human life and property.”
And with that, the hearing, which lasted all of six minutes, was over.
Lynch and his attorneys walked over to the cashier counter where Lynch fished out his wallet from his back pocket and paid up.
He then stayed behind in a closed room as his lawyer, Michael
P. Caffery, addressed reporters gathered in a narrow hallway.
“This matter is over,” Caffery said. “Certainly, everyone involved, especially my client, is happy to have it over. It’s taken a period of time for that to be done. It’s certainly good to be done.”
While the possibility of a criminal case is no longer looming, Lynch still may face a civil suit from Shpeley and disciplinary action from the National Football League.
Caffery took care Friday to emphasize that investigations by Buffalo police and the district attorney indicated Lynch did not know he had struck anyone.
Lynch is “remorseful,” Caffery told reporters, and he “feels sorry for having gone through this.”
He added that he didn’t believe the matter would have been picked up by the media had his client not been a professional athlete.
Caffery said he could not shed any light on questions of whether Lynch had refused to open his door when police came knocking at his Hamburg house a couple of hours after the accident.
He also would not discuss who was with Lynch in his car. Records obtained by The Buffalo News indicate fellow Bills player Steven Johnson was in the SUV.
The fine was fair, Caffery said, but he called the judge’s decision to revoke Lynch’s license “a little harsh.”
Lynch had just obtained his New York State license a day earlier, after surrendering his California license. It was unclear how long he would be barred from driving, although typically suspensions last about 45 days.
After the media dispersed, Caffery escorted Lynch out of the building.
A woman on the street recognized Lynch and began to shout: “Touchdown! Touchdown!”
Lynch got into the back seat of his lawyer’s black Land Rover and they drove away.
“He got off,” said Adrian Curry, 39, a certified nurse assistant who was waiting for the bus on Washington Street.
Curry believes he would have been treated differently if he had been the one behind the wheel.
“I probably would get a bigger fine,” he said. “And jail time.”
mbecker@buffnews.com and gwarner@buffnews.com
