Details emerge in Ray McDonald case
Ray McDonald's accuser's account of events was included in a Dec. 16 affidavit.
Ray McDonald's accuser's account of events was included in a Dec. 16 affidavit.
A woman who met then-San Francisco 49er Ray McDonald at a bar on Dec. 13 drank alcohol, went to his San Jose home that night, hit her head on the ground, woke up the next day naked in his bed and claimed they had sex without her consent, according a police search warrant affidavit obtained today.
The woman’s account of events was included in the Dec. 16 affidavit in which a San Jose police officer stated there was probable cause to search McDonald’s home to retrieve the woman’s missing shirt and watch as well as bedding that might contain body fluids, according to the court document.
San Jose police obtained the warrant from a judge Wednesday after hearing a report from the unidentified woman, who was being treated at a local hospital last Tuesday, alleging that McDonald had sexually assaulted her at his home on Bentley Ridge Drive in East San Jose.
News of the warrant prompted the 49ers general manager Trent Baalke later on Wednesday to announce the team had released McDonald from his contract and from the team for “a pattern of poor decision making that is no longer going to be tolerated.”
No charges have been filed against McDonald, prosecutors do not have the case and will have no comment on it, Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office media coordinator Sean Webby said.
Officer Sean Pierce, an undercover police officer in sexual assault investigations, stated in the affidavit that the evidence seized from McDonald’s home, including McDonald’s cellphone and surveillance camera from his bedroom, would be used to support a probe of alleged rape by intoxication.
The woman told police that on Dec. 13, she was drinking at a friend’s house in the Almaden Valley area and took a cab to the Willow Den bar on Lincoln Avenue in the Willow Glen neighborhood at about 10 p.m. when she stayed with four of her friends, McDonald and three of McDonald’s friends.
She described feeling “dizzy and sick” after a second vodka drink and called a cab, but her friends convinced her to go with them to McDonald’s two-story home in the Silver Creek Valley Country Club in East San Jose.
She recalled drinking at his bar upstairs, then being out by his pool, falling and hitting her head on the ground, then waking up the next morning on Dec. 14 naked in bed with McDonald, who she said told her “she was just tired so he let her sleep in his bed,” according to police.
The document also mentioned the woman saying that current 49ers defensive player Aldon Smith, who is on three years of probation for a DUI conviction earlier this year, arrived at McDonald’s house later in the day on Dec. 14. The three of them left to buy vodka and cranberry juice, started drinking and Smith stayed late into the night.
She later asked McDonald if contrary to his denial, they actually had sex the previous night and he admitted to her they did. “She asked him why he was lying to her and he said that he didn’t want to get accused of something crazy like rape,” the officer stated in the report.
The court filing revealed that as part of the investigation, police included text messages sent by McDonald and the woman, in which the she inquired if McDonald used a condom and if she should buy a “morning after” pill for birth control.
In the middle of the text conversation, a San Jose police sergeant started posing as the woman using the woman’s cellphone to write texts to McDonald.
“Yes, get the morning after pill,” McDonald wrote, to which the police sergeant answered “Ugghh :( that’s not cool,” and then McDonald answered, “S— just happened (woman’s first name omitted). We were just enjoying the moment.” “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know how I could have been enjoying anything,” the undercover investigator wrote.
“My friggin head hurts.” McDonald mentioned that he found the woman’s watch and offered to drive by and drop it off to her. The sergeant replied, “I’m just really bothered by all of this. I really don’t want to see u right now” and McDonald wrote back, “I don’t understand why you’re bothered. U chose to stay with me for another day.”
The officer posing as the accuser told McDonald that the then-football player should not have had sex with her “after I was knocked out! I could have died!” McDonald wrote back saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong. Like u told me before u started coming on to me” and urged her to take a morning-after pill.
The sergeant, still posing as the woman, asked, “How can I come on to u if I was drunk and woozy from hitting my head? You know better than that,” and McDonald answered, “Because u did (name omitted).”
49ers spokesman Bob Lange, when asked about the report of Smith being at McDonald’s house, declined comment.
Webby said the district attorney’s office, which prosecuted and obtained convictions against Smith for DUI and other charges in San Jose this year, would have no comment about Smith either.
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