Source: Hendricks County Jail
HENDRICKS COUNTY, Ind.–The attorney for former NFL player and radio host Joe Staysniak says there are lot of misconceptions about why charges were filed against his client in the first place.
Staysniak pled guilty to a count of misdemeanor battery Wednesday, in exchange for the other battery and strangulation charges against him being dropped.
“We resolved the case. The facts of the matter are that earlier this year Joe got a call from a neighbor that there was an unknown car on Joe’s property late at night parked off in the woods on the edge of Joe’s property, so Joe went to investigate it. He saw two people in the vehicle. It turned out to be Joe’s son and a friend. He immediately asked, ‘What the hell are you doing? Why are you pulled off in the woods?’ They both got belligerent with him,” said Staysniak’s attorney Guy Relford in a Thursday interview with 93 WIBC’s Hammer and Nigel.
Relford says Staysniak grabbed Joe’s friend by his hoodie and said he wanted to talk to him.
“He didn’t leave a mark on him. He didn’t hurt his son. There’s none of that. Some people have said he dragged them both out of the car and punched them both in the face. None of that is true. That’s why the prosecutors dropped all the serious charges. There was a strangulation charge because the kid said, ‘Oh when he grabbed my hoodie, the string of the hoodie choked me across my neck.’ There was no evidence of that. It was just the kid exaggerating,” said Relford.
Relford says what that is qualifies as a Class B misdemeanor and he got probation.
“He’s got to go through an anger management evaluation. Alcohol wasn’t involved. Joe had no cocktails that night before any of that happened, but if you go on probation in Hendricks County, then they make you go through the evaluation. He’ll clear all that and it will be a non-issue. He got a slap on the wrist because he grabbed a kid by the hoodie, but that’s all this was. Quite frankly, it should have never been prosecuted,” said Relford.
Staysniak was given credit for four days that he had already served in jail, and the rest of his sentence was suspended.
Staysniak played in 63 career games in the NFL. During his career, he played for the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Indianapolis Colts and the Arizona Cardinals.
Staysniak played for the Colts from 1992-1995.
Staysniak also was a radio host for more than two decades. He worked for the talk radio stations WIBC and WFNI in Indianapolis until August 2021.
