Arrest warrant issued to Jalen Carter for involvement in fatal car crash
The Athens-Clarke County Police Department released a statement Wednesday calling for the arrest of Jalen Carter. This comes after police found out that Carter lied about his involvement in the crash that killed teammate Devin Willock and team staff member Chandler LeCroy in January.
Carter had reportedly initially claimed that he had no involvement with the crash and was over a mile away when it happened. But as more time passed, his story continued to change, and it appears he might have lied to the cops.
But the issue here isn’t just that his account of the wreck continually shifted, it also appears that he was racing and driving in a reckless manner.
“The evidence demonstrated that both vehicles switched between lanes, drove in the center turn lane, drove in opposite lanes of travel, overtook other motorists, and drove at high rates of speed, in an apparent attempt to outdistance each other,” the police statement said.
Quote via Seth Emerson/Twitter
It has also been revealed that LeCroy’s BAC was .197 at the time of the crash, double that of the legal limit in Georgia. Despite this though, it hasn’t yet been revealed if Carter was also impaired.
In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Carter said he will be returning to Athens, Georgia, and expects to “be fully exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing.”
How does this affect his draft stock?
Recent events now beg the question of how Carter’s draft stock is impacted. There were some concerns about his character coming into this draft. While it will annoy Trey to have to accept this, ESPN’s Todd McShay was the one at the forefront of these character issue claims and received a lot of flak for it.
Maybe it will play a bigger role than we all thought. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I would be scared to invest in a guy who thinks it’s a good idea to race and drive over 100 mph and lied to the cops about it.
But this is the NFL. If you are a great player, then somebody will find you a spot. We saw Micah Parsons fall on the account of character issues, and, well, look how that ended up. Every team who passed on him sorely regrets it.
Ultimately, Carter made a stupid mistake. I’m not going to defend what he did and say he did nothing wrong, but I think teams would be very stupid to pass on him because of it. You still have the chance to secure a generational talent, you just may need to give him a little boost in the maturity department.
Overall, Jalen Carter is extremely lucky this all went down the way it did. He could have gotten seriously injured or even killed and ruined his dreams of playing in the NFL. But instead, he will return to Georgia and await the ruling on the two misdemeanor charges before likely still finding himself being taken toward the top of this upcoming draft.
It’s clear that Carter still has some growing up or maturing to do.
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