Mark Sanchez's legal saga is finally headed toward an ending. The former Jets and Fox Sports voice has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the alleged attack on a truck driver in downtown Indianapolis last October, according to multiple reports Thursday.
Former Jets QB Mark Sanchez has agreed to plead guilty in connection to the alleged attack of a truck driver in Indianapolis last year. t.co/rhO6b2ZXL8
The incident happened while Sanchez was in Indianapolis to call a Raiders-Colts broadcast. He wound up in an alley confrontation with Perry Tole, a 69-year-old driver who was collecting used cooking oil behind a restaurant. Sanchez came away with multiple stab wounds to his upper torso, Tole with deep facial cuts. Tole claimed self-defense and was never charged. Sanchez, for his part, told police he remembered nothing.
Sanchez had been facing charges of battery causing serious injury, unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle and public intoxication, with a jury trial on the books for September 8. That trial is now being scrapped — the state and Sanchez's team filed a joint motion asking a Marion County judge to vacate it and instead set a guilty plea and sentencing hearing. It's still unclear which specific charge, or charges, Sanchez is actually copping to, and a judge still has to formally accept the plea.
Mark Sanchez agrees to plead guilty in stabbing case. t.co/C4Hu2msBl5
There's a second track to this thing too. Tole has a pending civil suit against Sanchez, Fox Sports and the company behind St. Elmo Steak House, and lawyers on both sides now say they're closing in on a resolution there as well.
Lawyers for Mark Sanchez and his victim say they are nearing a resolution to civil case. t.co/1Ld0geA9kS
For a guy who once started a Super Bowl-caliber Jets team's playoff runs and later carved out a second act as a broadcaster, this is a rough coda. Sanchez was let go by Fox Sports in the wake of the arrest, and a guilty plea closes the criminal side of what's been a genuinely bizarre story since it broke last fall — an alley stabbing nobody involved seems able to fully explain. The sentencing hearing, and the terms of that civil settlement, are the next things worth watching.