Star NFL linebacker Von Miller turned himself into police in Texas Thursday after he was charged with assaulting his pregnant girlfriend.
Miller, currently playing for the Buffalo Bills, surrendered and was quickly released on a $5,000 bail, WFAA reported.
Police said they were called to Miller’s high rise apartment in Dallas at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday for a “major disturbance.” They found Miller’s longtime girlfriend with “minor abrasions on her left hand and “injuries consistent with applied pressure to the neck,” according to an affidavit filed with the arrest warrant charging Miller with assaulting a pregnant person.
The girlfriend told police that she and Miller were arguing because she didn’t want to travel on her birthday this week. According to the affidavit, the girlfriend went from the bedroom to the office and slammed the door, which apparently made Miller “visibly angry.” He followed her into the office and yelled for her to “get out” of the apartment.
The victim “attempted to comply” with Miller’s demand that she leave, but he wouldn’t let her gather personal belongings and “began to shove and push her, all the while telling her to leave from the unit.”
Miller allegedly began filming her with his phone, “all while continuing to push and shove” her.
Miller grabbed her neck, “applying presser around the [girlfriend’s] eck for 3 to 5 seconds before letting go,” the affidavit says. When the victim again tried to gather her belongings, Miller allegedly grabbed her phone, threw her laptop on the floor, and then stomped on it. When she tried to pick up her laptap, the 6 foot 3 inch, 250 pound athlete “pulled her by the hair, ultimately pulling a chunk of hair out and causing her to all to the ground.”
The girlfriend, having regained her own phone, began filming Miller, who shoved her onto the couch and again put his hands around her neck. She got up from the house and told him she was calling police, and he left the apartment.
According to a recording of the girlfriend’s 911 call, she told a dispatcher, “My boyfriend is choking and hitting me … I have bruises all over me.” When the dispatcher asked if he was still there, she replied that “he just stormed out.”
The dispatcher asked if she needed medical attention, and she said she didn’t know.
“He pulled my hair out. I have, like, some blood on me — but not, like… yeah, I don’t know,” she said.
Later, WFAA contacted the girlfriend, who downplayed the incident, calling it “blown way out of context,” “outrageous,” and “a huge misunderstanding.”
“No one assaulted anyone,” she said by text, calling it just “a verbal disagreement.” “This is insane. And sad.”
Miller, 34, is a native of DeSoto, Texas, and is in his second season with the Bills after 10 years with the Denver Broncos, where he led the team to a Super Bowl win in 2015 and was named Super Bowl MVP, and one season with the Los Angeles Rams, where he also played on a Super Bowl winning team.
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[Featured image: FILE – Von Miller/(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)]
