TCU defensive back Jacob Fields offered to pay every medical bill for teammate Dozie Ezukanma after he sent him to the hospital with a brain bleed. The former punched and kicked the latter in the head, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Exact details of the incident remain unconfirmed and alleged.
However, it seems like the college football program and the athletic department were not as quick to act as they should’ve been. They did not contact the police until the day after the wide receiver was admitted for treatment.
Jacob Fields sent Dozie Ezukanma to the hospital with a brain bleed.
News of this unfortunate situation first broke on Aug. 18 when projected starting free safety Jacob Fields was dismissed from TCU. His dismissal stemmed from an aggravated assault in the John Justin locker rooms in the football facility.
Dozie Ezukanma, a veteran wide receiver, ended up in the hospital. He accused his teammate of throwing a dirty sucker punch because the teammate was upset with a play at practice. Meanwhile, a source close to Fields claimed that he faced mistreatment from his teammates in the days leading up to the altercation and was bullied. That does not seem to be the full story.
The arrest warrant affidavit claims that Fields was unhappy because Ezukanma was playing better than him in practice before the assault. He lost his temper the next day.
According to the police report, Ezukanma was sitting in the locker room, looking at his phone when Fields walked up and hit him in the forehead with a closed fist. The punch made him fall to floor. Fields then kicked him in the head “as hard as he could.”
The TCU Police Department interviewed Ezukanma after he was released from the hospital. He said he was unconscious after the assault and remembers asking people in the training room what happened after he came to it.
That is when it got scary. Ezukanma said he had a terrible headache and reported shoulder pain. He also had skin abrasions on his face from where his head struck the floor.
An athletic trainer for the football team rushed Ezukanma to the team doctor. TCU’s doctor highlighted the need for a CT scan. The trainer drove the wide receiver to the emergency room. Ezukanma was given an urgent CT scan.
The CT scan ultimately revealed a brain bleed. Ezukanma was transferred to the ICU. A second CT scan a few hours later revealed the hematoma had grown, so he was given blood pressure and pain control medications. He was in stable condition by night’s end. The wide receiver was released from the hospital on Aug. 16 after a three-night stay.
TCU did not report the locker room incident right away.
Dozie Ezukanma thought Jacob Fields sucker punched him because he was out-performing the defensive back during practice. They were “going hard” at each other since the start of preseason camp.
Fields later texted Ezukanma. He said, “I made an emotional decision cause how I felt I played the last few practices” and promised to “pay every hospital bill and then some to make this right.”
Unfortunately, TCU was not quick to divulge the incident.
According to Shambhavi Rimal of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fields attacked Ezukanma at around 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 13. The university did not report the assault to campus police until the next day. The defensive back was dismissed from the team on Aug. 15. The wide receiver was released from the hospital on Aug. 16.
If the delay in reporting was not bad enough, TCU did not provide a full understanding of what happened until later in the week. The dismissal of Fields and the reason for his dismissal were only made public because local reporters found out about the assault through third-party sources. Not a great look for the athletic department or the university.
Fields was arrested and charged with assault over the weekend. It will be interesting to see how Ezukanma chooses to proceed.