The Montero Assault Allegations, UPDATED

By: Laurie | April 3rd, 2009

UPDATE:

KING 5 News has learned Montero and the woman have had a relationship for some time.

Curious how “some time” is defined for a player who’s only been in the country a couple of months? Does the relationship predate his coming to the US?

**************

Nothing like waking up in the morning to a blow to our Sounders-loving guts.

I feel sick. Not an exaggeration.

From the PI:

A woman called the King County Sheriff’s office this week alleging that Seattle Sounders FC soccer star Fredy Montero was stalking her, two law enforcement sources said Thursday evening.

According to a law enforcement report about the incident, the 23-year-old woman told police on March 31 that she saw Montero in a car near her home in Sammamish. The report stated that she feared for her safety because Montero allegedly had sexually assaulted her in Bellevue the week before on March 22, which she had reported to the Bellevue Police Department.

[...]

Bellevue police briefed the sheriff’s department on the March 22 assault allegation, according to the two law enforcement sources, who said that Montero was the subject of that assault allegation.

Bellevue Police Department spokesman Greg Grannis declined to confirm whether Montero is under investigation. But he did say the department is investigating a March 22 sexual assault.

“We have a case number, and it’s an open investigation,” Grannis said. “It has not gotten far enough to where charges were filed yet.”

Grannis said the department does not usually name suspects prior to charges being filed. Detectives have not yet generated a probable cause statement, a document that is usually a precursor to charges being filed.

A King County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman would not say whether an assault case involving Montero had been referred to the office for prosecution. No charges have been filed against Montero; jail reports show no record of any bookings involving Montero. King County Sheriff’s Sgt. John Urquhart said that after preliminary investigation, it appears that no crime had been committed on March 31.

The only thing worse than a woman having her life ruined by sexual assault is a man having his life ruined by false accusations. At this point we have no idea which is the case — or if the reality is somewhere in the middle — and I’m not going to speculate. And the reality of these situations is that we may never know.

What’s important at the moment: Currently no arrests, no charges.

Like everyone else, I will be following closely.

Category: Seattle Team News

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Byron

I just wanted to say thank you so much Laurie for keeping the sounders blog here so up to date, even with such depressing news. I often go and visit other teams pages to get their opinion on upcoming matches, but they are updated so infrequently. Keep up the fantastic work!

as for the topic at hand, I am anxious as to what will happen. Hopefully things will turn out well.
Jordan

I'm not too concerned about this yet. If it is true, then yes, Montero deserves to be punished, both by community admonishment and by the law.

My sense though is that from a legal standpoint there isn't much of a case. Whether that means he's guilty but there's just too little evidence, or that woman is lying, or something in between, I'm not sure. But regardless, unless he goes and actually harasses the woman now, I suspect these charges will be dropped.

I don't really want to make a judgment call on the truth of the situation, because let's be honest, we have absolutely no facts. So let's just say I find it interesting that the chargers were filed just days after the Sounders first game -- as in right after the Sounders skyrocketed in popularity.
Str8Red

How could he stalk her? Dude's got the "flu." Team said so.
Laurie

There are no words for how much this is breaking my heart.

I'm not willing to pass any judgment either way yet. I'm just hoping that everybody involved, starting with the investigating officers and including the two people involved and the Sounders FO, does the right thing.

More than anything else, I want this to be untrue. But if by some chance it isn't, I don't want this to turn into the Neuheisel years at UW.
John

I don't want to look at this too cynically, but I doubt anything will come of this. Sports stars usually get away with these sorts of things when they turn out to be true (or get off lightly at least), and get the benefit of the doubt when there is less than hard evidence.

If it turns out to have some truth, I hope Freddy learns from this, because it is not excusable even if he gets off.