PITTSBURGH — On Thursday at the Pittsburgh Municipal court, two charges against Pitt guard Dior Johnson — one charge of Simple Assault (misdemeanor) and one charge of strangulation (felony) — were held, while charges of false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, witness intimidation, and aggravated assault were dropped.
”This is disappointing,” Johnson’s attorney Bob Del Greco said after the hearing. “He is an 18-year-old promising student athlete at the University of Pittsburgh, and holding these charges over for court will probably have a consequence to it and hopefully the consequence isn’t dire.”
Johnson’s account and the alleged victim’s accounts of the incident did not align, which caused disappointment from Johnson’s side at the result of the hearing. The victim testified remotely and was shown on a screen live from a different location.
Johnson’s attorney said the next steps in this process will take place on Dec. 7.
”He has a December 7th formal arraignment when he will report to the courthouse if the paperwork is ready. He will get a judge assignment and a notice of a pre-trial conference.”
While a charge for witness intimidation was added in the beginning of the hearing, the charge was eventually dismissed.
On Oct. 6, Johnson was initially charged with one felony count of aggravated assault, one felony count of strangulation, one misdemeanor count of unlawful restraint, one misdemeanor count of simple assault and one misdemeanor count of false imprisonment for an alleged incident that occurred on Sept. 5 and 6. Johnson was arrested on Oct. 7.
”I think he [Dior] did not anticipate — considering what he believes occurred, knows occurred — he did not anticipate criminal charges,” Del Greco said. “That’s a fair statement.”
The alleged incident was described in the criminal complaint, obtained by Pittsburgh Sports Now on Oct. 6.
The victim alleges that on the evening of Sept. 5, Johnson became angry with her for getting him and his phone wet. He allegedly slapped her across the face, causing her face to become red and puffy.
At 8:30 a.m. the next morning, the victim said that Johnson got into a verbal argument with her, which escalated. She states that she attempted to leave the apartment, but he wouldn’t let her. The argument reportedly continued for an hour before Johnson got violent and punched her in her arms, stomach and head multiple times.
The victim says that she called 911 in fear for her life, but Johnson ran after her with scissors, took the phone, hung it up and threw it. He then grabbed her head and pushed it into the bed making it hard for her to breathe.
At that point, the victim alleges that Johnson started cutting himself with the scissors, slashing his left arm multiple times to make himself bleed in an attempt to mitigate blame for the incident.
The victim provided a screenshot of her phone call log, which showed a call to 911 on Sept. 6 at 9:20 a.m. and 4 return calls to her phone with voicemail.
The victim said that Johnson attempted to call off from Pitt basketball practice that day because he did not want to leave her alone for fear that she would leave the apartment and call 911.
The report says the victim waited until Johnson eventually left, packed her things and left the apartment to seek medical treatment. She provided detectives via email a copy of her medical discharge reports from the hospital. She received treatment for multiple bruises and a concussion. Photos showed scratches on her neck, bruising on both of her arms, her left collarbone, left shoulder and chest.
Just excuse him from the team. This simply isn’t worth the headache even give Johnson’s 4 star rating.
Lock him up and move on. No need to keep covering this loser.
Hitting a woman is completely inexcusable under any circumstance. A man walks away, regardless. I’m curious why she spent the entire evening after that. Her testimony indicates she didn’t attempt to leave til the following morning. Young Mr. Johnson likely flushed millions of dollars down the toilet in a fit of rage. H2P