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USU football player charged with rape, forcible sodomy

Posted at 8:17 AM, Jun 29, 2018
and last updated 2018-06-29 10:41:00-04

LOGAN, Utah — A football player at Utah State University has been charged with rape and forcible sodomy after police say he raped a woman at a party while she was too drunk to give consent.

According to an indictment filed Thursday, 19-year-old Jamaal Anthony Evans of Logan is charged with rape as a first-degree felony and forcible sodomy as a first-degree felony.

The charges stem from an alleged assault that occurred at a party in Logan on June 17 and the early morning hours of June 18.

Police responded to a hospital where the alleged victim was receiving a sexual assault exam. A friend of the victim’s reported that the pair were at a party along with Evans and several others and that at some point the victim and Evans disappeared from the party.

The friend found the alleged victim’s phone but said Evans would not respond to her messages until later when he told her to “hold up” and that “we good.” She told police that she found the pair after hearing the shower turn on upstairs, as she had previously thought the bedrooms were occupied by sleeping roommates.

The friend told police that the bathroom door was locked and Evans would not let her in and her friend was not responding. She eventually forced her way into the bathroom and said her friend was “completely incoherent” but that Evans told her they “were good.” She said she pressed Evans and he admitted to having sex with the alleged victim.

The friend told police Evans told her: “When your(sic) in the moment and you want what you want, you just got to do it sometimes,” according to a statement or probable cause.

The friend also said there was vomit in the bedroom and the alleged victim was too incoherent to even talk as she was being driven home. She told police it was “most definitely” obvious the alleged victim was intoxicated.

Police spoke with Evans, who told them he believed the victim was not drunk during their encounter and showed no signs of impairment. He said the encounter was consensual and that he was a little buzzed but not drunk and that he had smoked marijuana. He told police he didn’t feel like he was too impaired to notice impairment on the alleged victim’s part because he feels “like I know I handle myself very well.”

Police also interviewed two other males who attended the party, and both said they could tell that both the friend and the alleged victim were drunk by the way they were acting.

“[Witness] went on to explain that he and [another witness] looked at each other and non-verbally agreed not to interact with the girls sexually in any way because they were obviously intoxicated and you can get in trouble for that,” a probable cause statement indicates.

Evans was ultimately booked into jail on the charges listed above.

Evans is listed on the Utah State Aggies website as a linebacker. Doug Hoffman, the associate AD for media relations at Utah State University, said Friday morning Evans has been suspended from the football team. The freshman is from Las Vegas, Nevada.