PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – Westview High School’s head football coach, Jamal Jones, has resigned from his position after allegedly shaking and slapping students in their sleep.
“We are prepared to move forward as Jamal Jones has resigned from our head coaching position, effective immediately,” Westview’s principal said in an email sent out to Westview’s football athletes and families.
According to a statement from McMinnville Police on Tuesday, officers were dispatched to the Linfield University campus at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 25 to conduct a welfare check. The WHS football team and area teams had been attending a camp hosted by Linfield University since Saturday, June 22.
According to one of the players, at approximately 1:30 in the morning Jones began entering the fieldhouse where the players were staying.
“He started off with four of my teammates,” one Westview high school football player said. “He threw off their blankets and started hitting them, and then he jumped on top of one.”
The Westview student claims that things got progressively worse.
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“That’s when he ended up making his biggest mistake. He went up to a kid, he ended up slapping these upcoming freshmen,” the student continued explaining, ” he ended up putting his knee on top of his chest and grabbed a kid that was across from him by the arm and pulled him towards him. After that, I walked away because that’s when I realized something was wrong.”
The McMinnville Police Department has since opened an investigation to determine any potential criminal offenses.
It was further uncovered that Jones is also a full-time police officer with the Hillsboro Police Department. Hillsboro PD has placed Jones on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
“He targeted some of the younger guys. Went up to each of them individually and started smacking them one by one,” said Sekoa Kurkowskiafoa, who plays on the Westview High School football team and said Jones slapped him. “Some of them he’d jump on top of and put himself on.”
Anthony Rodgers also plays on the team and said he watched his head coach slap a player so hard he cried.
“Put his knee on him, held him down, slapped him across the face and he was crying after that,” Rodgers said. “I felt really bad.”
At first, the boys said that they thought it was a team bonding exercise, but it got progressively more aggressive.
“Even if he was doing it in a playful manner,” said a player on the team who said he was slapped by Jones. “It’s not right to be touching us like that while we’re sleeping and we have no idea what’s going on.”
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The players’ said it didn’t seem like their head coach was in control of his actions at the time they allege he slapped them early in the morning.
“His speech was slurred,” Rodgers said. “He was cussing a lot and telling people to shut the eff up.”
“You know he was not in control of himself or his attitude,” Kurkowskiafoa said. “I see my teammates shaking, visually scared and confused.”
The three players claimed that Jones often spoke about his career as a law enforcement officer to them in a manner they thought was “inappropriate.”
“I don’t think he should be a cop anymore at all,” Rodgers said.
The players complimented the efforts of their other coaching staff to keep them safe
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