Recently retired UFC champion Jon Jones is facing a new set of criminal charges stemming from a car accident in February. A second case was filed against him in New Mexico on June 30, according to court records.
The new complaint reiterates a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and adds a charge for “Use of Telephone to Terrify, Intimidate, Threaten, Harass, Annoy or Offend.”
The charges originate from a two-vehicle collision on February 21. According to the police report, officers responding to the crash found a female passenger in one vehicle who exhibited “signs of significant intoxication and lacking clothing from the waist down.” The woman identified Jones as the driver and claimed he had fled the scene on foot.
She then reportedly connected an officer with Jones by phone. During the call, Jones allegedly “appeared to be heavily intoxicated and made statements implying his capacity to employ lethal force through third parties.” Another officer later had a separate conversation with a person believed to be Jones, who made similar “allusions to violence” while evading questions about his identity.
Jones later told police that the individual who called him “immediately opened the conversation with unprofessional language,” causing him to doubt the caller’s legitimacy. An investigation of Jones’ call records revealed 13 calls to the woman involved in the accident between 2:17 a.m. and 11:34 a.m. Police also noted a gap in his phone activity from 11:51 p.m. to 2:11 a.m., the timeframe in which the crash occurred.
For the initial incident, police had already filed a misdemeanor charge against Jones for leaving the scene. He pleaded not guilty, and a bench trial is scheduled for August 14. An arraignment for the new complaint is set for August 4.
Jones’ attorney, Christopher Dodd, has filed a motion to dismiss the new case, citing that it violates the “mandatory joinder rule” by improperly prosecuting his client twice for the same incident. “Mr. Jones now is forced to defend himself against two separate cases involving the exact same factual allegations,” Dodd wrote in his motion, suggesting the duplicate filing was either an error or an “improper strategic purpose” by law enforcement.
The legal troubles follow Jones’ sudden retirement from mixed martial arts in June, when he vacated the UFC heavyweight championship. His retirement announcement preceded the first reports of the February accident by only a few hours. More recently, Jones has hinted at a comeback after President Donald Trump proposed a UFC event at the White House.
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