Saturday, September 11, 1999

Wingfield sentenced to 1 year

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Ex-UC star described as a 'lost soul'

BY EARNEST WINSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dontonio Wingfield is led to jail after sentencing. (Glenn Hartong photo) ZOOM

        Described as a “lost soul” with no money, former University of Cincinnati basketball star Dontonio Wingfield was sentenced Friday to one year in jail for assaulting two Forest Park police officers.

        “His basketball career appears to be over. As it stands right now, there aren't a lot of prospects for him,” defense attorney Hal Arenstein told Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge David Davis.

        Mr. Wingfield, 24, pleaded guilty in June to assaulting the officers during a domestic dispute last year at his girlfriend's apartment. Friday, the judge sentenced him to one year on the aggravated assault charge and six months on the assault charge. But he will only have to serve one year in jail because both sentences will run concurrently.

        Mr. Wingfield limped into the courtroom Friday in handcuffs, using a cane he needs to help him recover from injuries he suffered in a car accident last year.

        He left the courtroom teary-eyed. He declined to speak in court or talk to reporters. Robyn Fenderson, who called herself a friend of Mr. Wingfield, said she had never seen him in such low spirits. She tried to hug him, but a Hamilton County Sheriff's deputy wouldn't let her.

        “I've never seen him look that bad. He's so thin,” said Ms. Fenderson, 28, of Mount Airy, who is studying criminal justice at UC. “The person that came in that courtroom is not the same person (I know).”

        Judge Davis, who said Mr. Wingfield is indigent, told him he has shown “very little” remorse since the scuffle with police.

        But those who know Mr. Wingfield say he is remorseful.

        “You really, really got to know Don in order to read what he's thinking or how he feels,” his former varsity basketball coach Willie Boston of Westover High School in Alba ny, Ga., said in a telephone interview Friday.

        “The problem that Dontonio has is ... controlling his temper. In his heart, he's a very good fellow,” Mr. Boston said. “(But) If he feels like he has been mistreated, he goes about solving those types of problems in the wrong way.”

        And now that Mr. Wingfield's latest problems have landed him in jail, friends worry that it may take him even longer to get his act together. Adding to his troubles is a pending suit by the two Forest Park police officers, who are seeking damages of more than $25,000 each. Officers Rick Jones and Robert Huber claim Mr. Wingfield injured them during the scuffle. Officer Jones had a broken finger.

        “He has nothing to fall back on,” said Ms. Fenderson, noting that Mr. Wingfield left UC after one season in 1994 for what turned out to be a short-lived NBA career. “He has no trade. He doesn't know how to do anything but play basketball.”

        Friends say Mr. Wingfield needs some guidance. They say he grew up in a single-parent home in Georgia, where he has recently been living with his mother. Rarely, they say, has he had to do much for himself because his basketball talents got him many things he wanted.

        “I hope somebody takes that boy under their wing, and just starts all over. That's a boy,” said Ms. Fenderson. “If he got the right person in his corner — he'll change.”

        Mr. Boston thinks many people who were once associated with him because of his basketball talents have given up on him. Not Mr. Boston.

        “People have been writing him off all his life, and I've learned from being around Don, never write him off,” he said. “I think when it's all said and done we'll be able to look at Don and say he's a helluva man.”

       

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