As cornerback Terrion Arnold waits for a new team to sign him — and for a judge to decide whether he’ll be required to wear a GPS monitor while on house arrest pending trial — it’s worth taking a look at how he landed in his current legal predicament.
Predicament is, of course, an understatement. Arnold faces eight felony charges. Three for armed robbery, one for conspiracy to commit armed robbery, three for kidnapping, and one for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
The crimes carry a possible sentence of life in prison.
The Athletic recently posted a detailed article regarding the events that led to the alleged effort to recover property that had been stolen from a house Arnold had rented in Florida earlier this year.
And it’s indisputable that Arnold was the primary victim of the initial theft. Per the report, Arnold told police that the perpetrators had absconded with an $80,000 diamond chain, expensive designer bags, four pairs of designer shoes, two Rolex watches, a cellphone, a Bible, and $100,000 in cash.
When police suggested that Arnold must have been planning to go to the nearby Hard Rock casino, Arnold was candid.
“Oh my God, you know I was,” Arnold said, based on a recording of the call The Athletic obtained from the Largo Police Department. “It’s the offseason, man. . . . Blackjack and roulette.”
The initial robbery, which Arnold told police was an “inside job” (per the report), happened at an Airbnb rented by Arnold. Per the report, a man in the neighborhood guessed that 20 people were coming and going from the home Arnold had rented. The neighbor said he smelled a “constant cloud” of marijuana coming from the rented house.
The Athletic also reports that neighbors saw a stripper standing on a counter that was visible through the kitchen window. The host of the Airbnb estimated that it took three hours and 20 trash bags to clean the house after Arnold left.
“What a weekend,” the president of the community’s homeowners association told police, based on bodycam footage. “We’re changing the rules because of that.”
On Sunday, February 1, Arnold and others noticed items missing from the house. Arnold reportedly visited a neighbor across the street and asked to review security footage.
“He was respectful, he was kind,” the neighbor told police, per The Athletic. “But his group that he was with were just loud and obnoxious. . . They definitely came across lower-rent than him. He seemed somewhat professional. I wanted to run into him to just say, ‘This is your image, this is your brand. You got to lose these clowns.’”
Some of those clowns later behaved less like Bozo and more like Pennywise.
The story from The Athletic details the ensuing effort to recover the property from the suspected thieves. We’ll defer to the story, which is worth a full read.
The armed robbery and kidnapping are brought to life via text messages sent among others who were implicated in the crime. The effort ultimately failed to recover the stolen property. Arnold later told police that he no longer wished to press charges, expressing hope that the property would be returned and, if not, he would “pursue civil recourse.”
Arnold has insisted that he had nothing to do with the armed robbery and kidnapping. His lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, contends that Arnold was “the trophy in this case,” and that police had targeted him from the beginning of the investigation.
That part, frankly, seemed obvious from the outset. When the first article regarding a hearing involving two of the defendants emerged in the middle of February, a detective linked the accused to Arnold. (The angry responses to the tweet of our initial article regarding the possible ties to Arnold have a much different feel now.)
Arnold rented the house. Arnold’s property was stolen. Arnold reported the property as stolen. Either the others acted on their own to get it back and kept Arnold completely out of the loop, or Arnold put the effort to recover the property in motion and tried to insulate himself from later scrutiny.
It will all continue to play out in court. As one officer reportedly said to a colleague shortly after the initial theft was reported, “Jesus Christ, this is a clusterfuck, isn’t it?”
