INDIANAPOLIS — A coach has been charged following an investigation into a fight after a basketball game at Triton Central High School Fieldhouse in Shelby County.
Laquita Carter, a coach for the Cincinnati Indians Elite girls' basketball team, faces formal charges of criminal confinement with moderate bodily injury and battery resulting in moderate bodily injury, both felonies.
On July 23, Shelby County Sheriff's Department deputies responded to the gym for a fight involving juvenile players, adults and referees. The fight was determined to have happened during a basketball game between the Cincinnati Indians Elite of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the DSP Heat of Owensboro, Kentucky, as part of a tournament organized by Indiana US Amateur Basketball.
During the game, an official was confined and assaulted, according the sheriff's department.
On Aug. 11, an arrest warrant was issued for Carter. Three days later, she was taken into custody in Cincinnati, where she is awaiting extradition to Shelby County.
According to the sheriff's department, an additional investigation discovered that juvenile members of a boys' team stole five monitors from a classroom at the school, valued at a total of $1,700.
Juvenile members of the Cincinnati Indians Elite girls' and boys' teams were also involved in the fight in the gym which led to the injury of another official.
"The investigation into the identity of the juveniles involved in the battery and theft is ongoing and has proven difficult due to lack of cooperation," the department said, noting that "several calls to the coaches have not been returned."
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact Detective Joseph Mohr at 317-398-6661.
The Kentucky team's coach said his girls were already off the court when the punches started flying between the girls from Cincinnati and at least one of the referees.
"Hundreds and hundreds of games, we do it every year. We love it," travel basketball dad Randy Lane said.
He's talking about going to all the games his 15-year-old daughter plays for the DSB Heat. Lane is usually in the stands taking video when his daughter is on the court. After Sunday's game against the Indians Elite, Lane stopped rolling, but hit record again when he said he saw a fight happening on the court.
The video shows a commotion happening on the left side of the screen. It quickly shifts to the right, as you see members of the Cincinnati team walking toward a female referee at center court.
"I didn't hear a lot of what was said, but you could see them arguing back and forth,” Lane said.
The coach from the Kentucky team was watching, too.
"I see them running after her, and she's backpedaling, and it's just chaos, I'm talking just chaos,” DSB Heat coach Bobby Ewing said.
Chaos that Ewing said only got worse when someone in a black hoodie punched the referee.
"Just punched her right in the face. You can see it. Jumps up, hits her in the face,” Ewing described.
You can't see it from the angle in Lane’s video, but Ewing said the referee then threw a basketball at someone.
"I guess she hits somebody, and then about that time, she starts backpedaling, and they get her on the ground and just jump on her,” Ewing said. "They were stomping and everything. Kicking. It was a full-blown fight."
Ewing and several others called 911. He said other referees and a few parents from his team eventually broke up the fight and got the female referee to the sideline.
"It was a scary situation," said Ewing. "It was scary."
And although shocking, not totally surprising, said Ewing, when he considers how contentious the game between the two teams had been.
The DSB Heat was up 41-10 when another referee called the game 10 minutes before it was supposed to end. That's because, Ewing said, the Cincinnati team was swearing at his players, and it seemed to be escalating.
"I hear them saying, ‘We can go outside,’” Ewing said. "None of our kids on our team wants to fight."
If his team said anything back before the refs called the game, Ewing said it was what he calls “basketball talk.”
"'You can't guard me,' or 'I'm going to stop you,' stuff like that. No cussing and all this stuff. You can't attack people,” Ewing said.