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“I Don’t Know What Is Going On Around Me”: Ohio State RB Reportedly Involved In Bizarre, Public Incident On Campus

Generally, when someone commits an assault, your only concern is for the victim of said assault. In the case of Ohio State running back Jaamal Berry, though, things don’t seem to be quite so simple. OSU’s student paper, The Lantern, recently reported that Berry was seen earlier this week on Ohio State’s campus “wrestling with another student.” While the police report called it an assault, Berry has not been charged, and some of the details make it clear this was not an ordinary altercation.

First of all, it happened in broad daylight: approximately 10:25 a.m. on Wednesday. And the more accounts you hear, the more you’re unsure of exactly what was going on – and unsettled by it all the same.

The primary witness is a university employee who declined to comment, but said in the police report that Berry was muttering things such as “I don’t know what is going on around me.”

The report said Berry “appeared confused and disoriented and was unable to tell me his name.”

The OSU police officer on the scene observed that Berry was “mentally unable to provide me with any of his emergency contact information,” and Berry voluntarily went to the OSU emergency department.

[...]

One of the witnesses requested to remain anonymous but spoke to The Lantern in an email. The witness said she “saw a student laying on the ground and a middle-aged woman standing above him asking if he was okay. The middle-aged woman said that the student on the ground had attacked another student. The student on the ground, who was later identified as Jaamal Berry, was clearly out of sorts and appeared to be quite disconnected from his surroundings.”

These are all worrisome accounts. Additionally, alcohol was ruled out as a factor, leaving even more doubt as to exactly what was happening. Following the incident, Berry was admitted to OSU Medical Center, but according to spokesman Jerry Emig, “[s]o far, no medical issue has been identified.”

Hopefully, some answers are arrived at soon, because we don’t like the sound of any of this. “Disoriented”? “Don’t know what is going on around me”? This wasn’t some everyday disagreement that escalated because people wanted to act like tough guys. It sounds there was something a little more serious at play, and again, though it feels a little weird to say it, we hope both people involved in this assault are okay.

[Reddit]

Getty photo (by Jamie Sabau)