Former Atlanta Falcons safety William Moore issued a statement Friday about his arrest on aggravated assault charges, though he remains in the Gwinnett County Jail without bond.
Moore, 37, is accused of shooting at and hitting a car occupied by a woman and two children at a Gwinnett park, according to arrest warrants obtained by Channel 2 Action News. No one was injured during the incident.
Through his lawyer, Moore released a statement saying he fired at the woman’s tire to prevent her from backing up into his car, which his children were in at the time.
The shooting took place at Alexander Park in Lawrenceville around 6 p.m. Sunday, according to Channel 2. The victim, who asked that she and the children not be publicly identified, said the confrontation began between kids and escalated so that adults were involved.
Video from the scene shows Moore and an unidentified woman standing close to the victim’s car. Moore appears animated as he tries to talk to the victim through her car window. As the woman backed up her car, Moore appears to fire at the vehicle.
Moore’s account also said it began with a confrontation between children. In an effort to talk to the woman who was with one of the kids involved, Moore parked his car behind hers and approached the driver’s-side window, his lawyer said. Before Moore pulled his gun, the woman backed into his car and pulled forward again, he said.
Anticipating that the woman was planning to hit his car again, “William was terrified that his children would be seriously hurt or killed if he did not act immediately,” Moore’s lawyer, Matthew Crosby, said in the statement. “So, he shot at her car’s tire and away from the occupants, attempting to disable her vehicle and prevent further deadly threats to his children.”
Moore is facing two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of third-degree cruelty to children and one count each of second-degree criminal damage to property and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, jail records show.
The former NFL standout has been arrested multiple times in the metro Atlanta area since he became a second-round draft pick out of the University of Missouri in 2009. The first came on a bench warrant in 2011 after he was caught speeding in Gwinnett, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. He was charged with failure to appear and multiple traffic violations.
In 2013, Moore was arrested in Atlanta on a simple battery charge, the AJC reported. Police said Moore got into an argument with a woman that led to him throwing her phone to the ground and grabbing her by the shoulder. By that time, Moore was an established starter with the Falcons who had played in the NFL Pro Bowl and signed a new contract the prior season.
His seventh and final season in the NFL was 2015.
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