By The Laramie Boomerang

Via Wyoming News Exchange

LARAMIE — A woman told police she was blindsided by a strike from a University of Wyoming men’s basketball player that reportedly rendered her unconscious during a December incident in Laramie, according to documents filed in Albany County Circuit Court Monday.

Suspended UW men’s basketball point guard Nyaires Redding is scheduled to appear in Albany County Circuit Court later this month facing one count of battery and two simple assault counts stemming from a Dec. 9 incident at Roxie’s on Grand in Laramie’s downtown.

The UW senior was initially facing less serious charges for allegedly inciting a fight. The original citation said Redding “did admit to flipping a person off and calling them a name after he’d been struck.” However, new charges filed in Albany County in mid-January allege Redding assaulted multiple women on Dec. 9.

The affidavit filed in circuit court Monday indicates that investigators found a fight had occurred in the upstairs portion of Roxie’s where three women allege Redding acted violently toward them. Louis Cirillo, a Laramie Police officer, said he arrived on scene just after 1 a.m. and learned from another officer already on location that a woman was found “semi-conscious” lying on the floor in Roxie’s before being taken to Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

At the time, bouncers at Roxie’s told officers those involved in the fight had left the area. One of the parties involved was identified by the bouncers as Redding, who they referred to as “Ny.”

At the hospital, the woman who was knocked unconscious, identified as Molly Pickerill in the simple battery citation, said she’d been struck on the right side of her head by an unknown assailant. Pickerill said she immediately hit the floor with her left side of the face striking the ground. Officers recounted the woman having “slight redness and swelling in her right cheek area.”

Pickerill told investigators she could not identify who had struck her, but others told her it was Redding.

While still at the hospital, officers spoke with a second woman, identified as Katie Schrater in the simple assault citation, who said she was at Roxie’s at the time Pickerill was struck. Redding, Schrater said, had called another female friend a name and that pushing between Schrater and Redding ensued. Redding, she said, “clawed” her glasses off and “hit her with a closed fist, causing a bloody nose.” Schrater said Redding “treated her like a guy.” After going to the bathroom to clean up her bloody nose, Schrater said she found Pickerill unconscious on the floor.

A third woman, identified only as “J.K.K.” in the affidavit, said she was the woman Schrater told police was the target of Redding’s insult. J.K.K. told police she and Redding had exchanged glances and that he called her a name. Redding, she said, pushed her with both hands approximately three times.

Redding was contacted by police and stated that “there had been glances that had been exchanged between himself and (the alleged victims) and that he ‘flipped’ them off and that further altercations then occurred.”

Redding is scheduled to appear in Albany County Circuit Court at 9 a.m. Feb. 14.