UGA alumnus charged with battery, false imprisonment of Clemson student

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

University of Georgia police have charged a 2009 UGA alumnus with false imprisonment and misdemeanor battery of an 18-year-old Clemson University student who says he was held captive and beaten in the basement of an Athens fraternity house a week ago.

Defense attorney Manny Arora told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Saturday that 23-year-old Gene Whitner Milner III was charged Friday and he would turn himself in to police on Monday.

According to a police report, an officer saw Clemson student Stephen Spaseff running while crying and yelling for help down the middle of Lumpkin Street just before 3:30 a.m. last Sunday. Spaseff's clothes were wet and dirty and he had urinated on himself.

The report also said Spaseff, in Athens for Georgia-Auburn football game, had multiple cuts and a swollen right eye.

But the officer also wrote in the report he had trouble sorting out all the details because of Spaseff's “level of intoxication.”

UGA police Chief Jimmy Williamson declined to discuss specifics of the case, according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

"[Milner] was at the [Chi Phi fraternity house] and committed the crime at the property -- that's all I will verify," Williamson told the newspaper. "There were other people present and it appeared they were not involved. I'm not going to go into what they saw or what they said."

According to both Arora and the police report, Milner and Spaseff had clashed at a bar near the frat house after Milner was hit in the face with a beer bottle thrown by one of three men standing nearby.

Two of them ran but Spaseff stayed behind, Arora said.

Then Spaseff agreed to go with Milner to the fraternity house about 200 yards away so Milner could call the police, Arora said.

Arora said he doubted Milner – who graduated last spring -- was the responsible for Spaseff’s injuries.

“He [Spaseff] admitted to being in a fight earlier with somebody. And we know he fell when he was leaving the fraternity house. But he didn’t need any medical treatment,” Arora said.

He said the police examined Milner’s hands and saw no evidence of a fight.

“We didn’t take anybody by force,” Arora said.