Thabo Sefolosha is currently working his way back from a broken leg that he suffered towards the end of the NBA regular season last year. The broken leg allegedly occurred outside of a nightclub in Manhattan, New York where fellow NBA player Chris Copeland was stabbed. Sefolosha was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and the trial for this case started on Tuesday with the two sides having very different stories, according to Colin Moynihan of The New York Times.
The broken leg Sefolosha suffered caused him to miss the duration of the NBA playoffs where his Atlanta Hawks made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. Sefolosha has accused the police of wrongful arrest and police brutality and it seems as though he and the cops at the scene that night cannot agree on a story.
The police contend that Sefolosha was standing outside the club at the crime scene where Copeland was stabbed and refused to move despite being asked to do so several times. They say that Sefolosha was being extremely disruptive and even took a few verbal jobs at one of the officers allegedly saying "You're mad. You're a midget. I'd be mad, too, if I was a midget." The cops reportedly said that they asked Sefolosha to move about six times but also said that was only a guesstimate.
Sefolosha and his lawyer, Alex Spiro, refuted almost everything the cops were saying and they contend that the officers broke Sefolosha's leg after attacking him because they "saw a black man in a hoodie." The police officers said that Sefolosha acted as though the rules don't apply to him while Sefolosha's lawyer portrayed the Hawks guard as "quiet and introspective."
Another major difference in the two sides stories is that one of the cops claimed that Sefolosha told him at some point that he had broken his leg at some point earlier, before the incident to which Spiro responded by stating that Sefolosha had played in a game that day.
Sefolosha already turned down a plea agreement offered by the prosecutors in which he would have had to do a day of community service and stay out of trouble for six months. The arrest is being investigated by the internal affairs division of the police department as it was captured by an onlooker who took a video.
The trial will resume on Wednesday and is expected to be completed by the end of the week, according to Bob Hille of Sporting News.
