Miami Dolphins defensive end Randy Starks was arrested early Sunday after police said he struck an officer with a slow-moving Freightliner truck, according to a police report.
Starks, 25, faces a charge of aggravated battery, according to the report. The arrest took place about 12:20 a.m. in Miami’s South Beach area. Officers said they saw the Freightliner truck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on South Beach’s Ocean Drive with some 13 people inside, including a woman sitting on the lap of Starks, who was driving. The truck’s seating capacity is four occupants, the police report said. It was not clear from the police report whether the Freightliner — normally part of a tractor-trailer — was connected to a trailer. In the report, the officer recalled pursuing the truck on foot for about a half-block and pounding on the rear driver’s-side window, but it kept moving. The officer caught up to the truck again, and it stopped after the officer pounded on the window again, the report said. “I slowly approached the side door and just as I reached it the vehicle accelerated and started moving forward and slightly to the left,” the unidentified officer writes in the report. “The vehicle’s path caused the driver’s side of the vehicle to strike me in the chest pushing me back and pinning me against a vehicle stopped in traffic in the northbound lane.” Meanwhile, a second officer was pounding on the passenger’s-side window, the report said. The truck stopped, and Starks was arrested. A police check showed that the truck’s license plate was not assigned to that vehicle, the report said, and Starks faces a charge for that as well. Starks was released from jail later Sunday, according to a records check. The Miami Herald newspaper reported earlier he was jailed on $10,000 bond. Dolphins spokesman Harvey Greene told CNN the club was “only recently made aware of the situation. Since we are in the process of gathering information we have no comment.” Starks is in his sixth NFL season and his second with the Dolphins.
