Women’s soccer star Hope Solo is in the hot seat once again. Solo was arrested last June on two counts of domestic violence involving her half sister and nephew. ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” investigated the case,
and has uncovered details that paint Solo as a violent bully, who changed the narrative, and circumvented serious punishment. Here are a few of those highlights:
But when Obert’s son let Solo go, he told police she “immediately grabbed his hair, pulled his head down and started punching him in the face repeatedly.” Later, in the deposition, he said Solo “jumped on top of me and started bashing my head into the cement” inside the garage.
“She grabbed him by the head and she kept slamming him into the cement over and over again,” Obert told Outside the Lines. “So I came from behind her, and I pulled her over and, you know, to get her off my son. And then, once she got off, she started punching me in the face over and over again.”
Obert’s son, according to Officer Elizabeth Voss, had redness around his nose and left jawbone and a “bleeding cut on the bottom of his left ear, just above the earlobe.” His T-shirt was ripped and his arms were “bright red and had scratch marks.”
Obert “had bruising on the left side of her face,” and “a large scratch mark on the right side of her neck,” according to Officer Chuck Pierce. He wrote that Obert’s clothing was in “disarray” and it “appeared she could not stand.”
She also hurled insults at the arresting officers and threatened them:
It was early in the morning on June 21, 2014, and Hope Solo had just been arrested on two counts of domestic violence. The police were trying to book her into jail, but Solo was so combative that she had to be forced to the ground, prompting her to yell at one officer, “You’re such a b—-. You’re scared of me because you know that if the handcuffs were off, I’d kick your ass.”
Solo, perhaps the best women’s soccer goalie in the world, had repeatedly hurled insults at the officers processing her arrest, suggesting that two jailers were having sex and calling another officer a “14-year-old boy.” When asked to remove a necklace, an apparently drunk Solo told the officer that the piece of jewelry was worth more than he made in a year.
The other discovery was that US Soccer may not have done their due diligence investigating what happened and issuing punishment. If Solo were a man, there would be more outrage. If women’s soccer was a more popular sport, there would be more outrage. The U.S. Women’s soccer team’s quest for the 2015 World Cup begins tonight.