Ben Roethlisberger poses for photos with Milledgeville, Ga., police on the same night a 20-year-old college student accused the NFL star of assaulting her in a local nightclub. Pictured are left to right, Officer Paul Cressman; Lt. Willie Goddard; Sgt. Jerry Blash; Roethlisberger; Detective Everett January; and Nick Reonas, a public safety officer with Georgia College & State University, where the woman is a student. Goddard and Blash were on duty when the photo was taken; Blash wrote the initial police report of the woman's complaint.
The police chief in Milledgeville, Ga., acknowledged on Friday that some of his officers posed for photos with Ben Roethlisberger on the night the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback was later accused of sexual assault. Other than one of the officers filing the initial incident report, the chief said none of them has been involved in the ongoing investigation.
The Union-Recorder of Milledgeville published of photo on Friday of a smiling Roethlisberger with Sgt. Jerry Blash. It reported Blash had photos taken with Roethlisberger inside a local bar and later outside with a group of other officers.
The paper said Blash, an eight-year veteran of the department, was the officer approached by the alleged victim, a 20-year-old college student, and that he was the author of the initial incident report that did not name Roethlisberger.
"The photos were taken over an hour before the investigation, and none of the officers in the photos, other than Blash doing the initial report being the supervisor, are involved in the investigation," Chief Woodrow Blue said in a phone interview.
Blue said it was "not unusual at all" that Roethlisberger was not identified in the initial report.
The alleged incident occurred in the early hours of Friday March 5. Thursday night is a big party night for college students in Milledgeville, home of Georgia College & State University, where the woman who filed the complaint is a student.
The website of the Union-Recorder has a photo of Sgt. Blash with Roethlisberger, smiling and clad in a black jersey with a devil image across the chest. It also shows a photo of Roethlisberger posing with a group of five men. In the group photo, Roethlisberger has his arms over the shoulders of Blash and another man.
"Every Thursday night we do a downtown detail. It's a two-block area. We have a lot of eating establishments/night clubs. We put a detail down there to help, just to work the area and make sure everything's safe," said Blue.
"The officers in the picture, three of them were off-duty and had been there eating and were leaving. The other two were on duty. One was working the downtown detail. The other one was the shift supervisor (Blash) working the rest of the city."
The alleged incident with Roethlisberger occurred at a club called Capital City.
"This (the photos) happened over an hour before the alleged incident happened, and it happened at a different establishment. They were about a block and half away," said Blue.
No criminal charges have been filed. The investigation is being done by Milledgeville police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a state agency which assists local jurisdictions.
It remains uncertain when the investigation will conclude and when authorities will make their decision on whether to file charges.
"We have nothing scheduled (in the way of a press briefing) at this time," the chief said.
SOURCE: USA Today
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