The Dispatch tracked down the guy that was booked for assaulting Tyler Moeller:
According to police and court reports, Moeller was punched by Ralph G. Decker at Gators Cafe & Saloon in Treasure Island, Fla., early in the morning of July 26.
...
Decker, 27, of Kenneth City, Fla., was arrested at 12:20 a.m. and charged with simple battery -- a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
He was booked into a Pinellas County jail and released after paying a $150 bond.
There are no details of the incident. The police report states only, "Male injured in fight with other male." According to Moeller's family, Tyler was punched without provocation.
(As much as the blogosphere likes to pile on old media, this type of reporting is still something they do very, very well -- the digging for facts, calling police departments, etc. Hats off to Ken Gordon and Tim May on the scoop.)
Comments
so trashy
not to hate on the moeller family or anything like that, but the report makes me wonder whether it was a sucker punch or a fight
Dave Biddle at Bucknuts is saying that part of the original confusion surrounding the report as it was filed is because there's apparently a local ne'er-do-well also named Tyler Moeller (no relation). The cops incorrectly assumed that our Tyler Moeller was their Tyler Moeller, and hence the original report treated it as a fight between two local rowdies and assessed Decker with the misdemeanor "simple battery" charge. It should (and likely will) be upgraded to aggravated battery.
Just posted on Good Shizzy---Austin Spitler injured...could miss a week or two with a reported strained calf...
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/i...
If this keeps up, by the time the Trojans and Buckeyes meet they'll both be fielding their second team off the depth chart.
Why does that guy look like the type of guy that would be mixed up in something like this. A sure 27 year old winner if I ever saw one.
I'm glad to see this here, great work Jason, and Ken and Tim of the Columbus Dispatch.
I'm removed from the the whole thing, I'm not a Buckeyes fan to the degree you all are, and when I saw and read reports of an OSU player having been assaulted, two things caught my eye right away...
One was all sorts of rhetoric, some of it sounding threatening, in defense of the player who was (supposedly) assaulted, stuff along the lines of "let's go down there to FL and get some payback, and beat the stuffing out of that thug who jumped our buddy", noise like that...
And two, I was struck by the complete absence of any real details of this supposed assault: no mention of the assailant's name, no mention of any arresting authority or any charges, and no mention of where exactly this all was supposed to happen...
And that's not right, if people are going to allege an assault, and make that claim in public (as the OSU player and his family did), then they can at least be specific about the details (the police involved certainly require this specificity), and all of this because otherwise we feel manipulated, as though someone were inciting a mindless mob to riot...
Anyway, I'm glad to see the details begin to emerge on this, it seems like it took a long time, seeing as all of this information was public on the very day a person was arrested in the matter.
And none of this is meant as any kind of slander against the OSU player or his family, as though they were liars or exaggerators or whatever... it's just that this kind of talk, an allegation of an assault in public, requires specifics, because otherwise everybody just gets angry or afraid or suspicious without any specific object of their anger or suspicion or whatever.
Glad to see not only the name of the assailant, but his picture too... maybe he has a version of the incident to tell, maybe we'll hear that soon.
And I'm in no way defending the guy, it's just that there's two sides to every story, and until you get the details of both sides, you're in the dark...
And a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing they say.
Thanks again all, for bringing more of this story to light.
Douchebag. That is all.
I hope he gets the Squirrel Master as his cellie.
I knew it was a fucking Gator.
nobody deserves this...but what is the family doin in a gator bar??
i live like 20 mins from treasure island and this is definately heavy gator country, and there are a few buckeye bars and restaurants down here....but still this fuckin loser deserves alot more then jus 60 days in jail, who knows what he may have cost Tyler Moeller in the long run...
totally dude.