Former Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, New York’s first-round draft pick in 2009, faces up to six years in prison on a felony battery charge after an incident last Saturday that resulted in Sanchez hospitalized with multiple stab wounds. On Friday, a new leaked video revealed strange behavior by the NFL star-turned-Fox Sports commentator leading up to the violent altercation.
What the security camera video, obtained and published online by the celebrity news site TMZ, does not show is the alleged altercation itself, between the 38-year-old Sanchez and 69-year-old cooking oil recycling truck driver and Indianapolis resident Perry Tole.
Video Shows Sanchez Roaming Aimlessly
According to TMZ, the video â actually a montage of several surveillance videos â shows events “from 12:05 AM, when the alleged victim, Perry Tole, pulled up in his service truck … to 12:30 AM, when Sanchez fled the scene, bloodied from stab wounds.”
The video shows Sanchez strolling back and forth on an Indianapolis street, apparently inexplicably, prior to the incident. Sanchez had earlier been hit with a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication, but of course from the video there is no way to draw definitive conclusions about whether the married father of three was inebriated at the time.
Attorney Alleges ‘Violent Attack’ by Sanchez
According to police cited by the TMZ report, it was during a five-minute period not captured by the security cameras â or at least not made public so far â between 12:25 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. that “Sanchez pulled Tole out of his truck, prompting Tole to pepper spray and stab Sanchez … and Sanchez allegedly slammed Tole to the ground, leaving him with a severe facial laceration.”
While the video does not exactly shed light on what caused the altercation, Erik May â Tole’s attorney in the alleged victim’s lawsuit against Sanchez and Fox â called it a “violent attack.”
âMr. Tole is a 69-year-old senior citizen, heâs 5-foot-8, goes about 165. Mark Sanchez is a former NFL athlete, a former NFL quarterback. Heâs 6-foot-2, 235. The optics of it, my clientâs not gonna pick a fight with anybody, let alone a former professional athlete,â May said, as quoted by WXIN Fox 59 TV News in Indianapolis. âWhy did this happen? Was it over a parking dispute? I donât think it was over a parking dispute. My client was the victim of a violent attack.â
Sanchez Reportedly Still Employed by Fox
According to a report by WXIN on Wednesday, both Sanchez and Tole recorded video of the altercation between them on their respective cell phones. But if that report is accurate, none of the cell phone video from either man’s phone has been made public.
As of Friday, Sanchez â who was in Indianapolis to provide in-game analysis of the Las Vegas Raiders vs. Indianapolis Colts game the following day â apparently remains employed by Fox Sports, a fact causing some degree of dissatisfaction inside the Fox operation, according to a report by The Daily Mail newspaper.
“We haven’t been told anything, and it’s weird,” a Fox insider told the Mail. “If it were me or any of us other ‘lesser’ people, the poor schlubs, we’d have been fired the very next day. With Mark Sanchez it’s almost a week and there’s been no announcement, no formal resolution that the rest of us know. He’s not on air, but is he still getting the paycheck? Nobody knows.”
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