Police have completed their investigation, and the criminal claims against Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman are now in the hands of the San Diego County District Attorney.
The D.A. will decide whether to prosecute. A decision not to prosecute means that Merriman is off the hook. If the D.A. chooses to go forward, Merriman will find himself in the middle of a multi-step process that could culminate in a trial.
10News in San Diego reports that medical records have been included in the file, with the consent of the alleged victim, D-list celebrity Tila Tequila Nguyen.
Meanwhile, Nguyen resumed tweeting regarding the case, after more than a day of silence and a stream of deleted entries. But she has since announced that she will be posting no further updates (“Thank U everyone for your support but I will no longer be on Twitter during this time as I let the Legal System deal with this privately”), and she has deleted several new tweets.
“Bruises don’t pop up immediately after you get hit, but the next day....oh yes, they pop up everywhere and gets worse as time passes,” she posted on Wednesday morning, but then deleted it. (To confirm that, enter her Twitter screen name at Tweleted.com.)
In other words, it sounds like she wasn’t bruised when she went to the hospital. And absent a clear sign of injury, it’s unlikely that prosecutors will decide to proceed.
UPDATE: Her self-imposed Twitter ban didn’t last very long at all. This one sounds like a thinly-veiled threat: “I love my friends. I have such great friends. Such beastly soldiers....all the real men. I’m their princess. U don’t touch the Princess....”
