Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman won’t face criminal charges stemming from an incident at his son’s high school wrestling event this month, the St. Joseph County (Ind.) prosecutor’s office announced Monday.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it determined no criminal battery occurred after reviewing video evidence and conducting interviews with witnesses from the Jan. 3 wrestling tournament at Mishawaka High School.
The office said an assistant wrestling coach, identified by the South Bend Tribune as New Prairie High School’s Chris Fleeger, told police that someone he didn’t know approached him, said something he couldn’t recall and gave him a “two-handed push,” which caused him to stumble backward.
The assistant coach said he learned later from someone else that the person was Freeman. In a later interview, the coach told officers he immediately recognized Freeman and said “that he believed Mr. Freeman was ‘rich’ and that he planned to hire an attorney,” the statement said.
The prosecutor’s office said video evidence of Freeman leaving the gym with his son, Vinny, did not support the wrestling coach’s assertions. It said the complainant approached Freeman, who paused for one second before walking out of the gym.
The statement said one of Freeman’s hands remained in his pocket the entire time and “the head and body movements of both the complainant and Mr. Freeman do not support the supposition that any violent physical contact occurred.”
An off-duty law enforcement officer and two Mishawaka High School employees were among the witnesses who refuted the claim that Freeman forcefully pushed the coach. Detectives also interviewed acquaintances of the wrestling coach, and they alleged that Freeman pushed the coach with one hand or struck him.
In an interview with detectives, Freeman said he had previously met the assistant coach. As he was leaving the gym with his son, a Penn High School senior who has signed to wrestle at Cornell, Freeman told the coach to stop talking about his son to other wrestlers.
Freeman told detectives he didn’t recall making physical contact but didn’t know whether he inadvertently touched the coach as he walked past.
Notre Dame said in a statement Sunday that a local wrestling coach “verbally accosted” Vinny Freeman during and after his match and that Vinny’s parents intervened to remove him from the situation. The university called the accusations that Marcus Freeman committed battery “totally unfounded.”
