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USF football player LaDarrius Jackson charged with assaulting a second woman

 
LaDarrius Jackson, a 22-year-old junior defensive end, turned himself in at Orient Road Jail and is again facing charges of sexual battery and false imprisonment, the same charges filed in his May 1 arrest by USF police.  [ANDRES LEIVA   |   Times]
LaDarrius Jackson, a 22-year-old junior defensive end, turned himself in at Orient Road Jail and is again facing charges of sexual battery and false imprisonment, the same charges filed in his May 1 arrest by USF police. [ANDRES LEIVA | Times]
Published May 11, 2017

TAMPA — For the second time in 10 days, USF football player LaDarrius Jackson has been charged with forcing a woman to have sex.

Two women and two law enforcement agencies have now leveled charges against the 22-year-old junior defensive end, who was kicked off the team after the second arrest Wednesday, USF said.

This time, investigators say DNA evidence links Jackson to his accuser.

He turned himself in Wednesday at the Orient Road Jail to face new counts of sexual battery and false imprisonment, in addition to the ones filed May 1.

His latest arrest stemmed from a March 27 incident in an apartment near the USF campus, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said.

A woman told investigators that Jackson went to her apartment to do his laundry, as he had done before without trouble. She said he removed her clothes and forced her to perform sex.

In the hours that followed, she completed a sexual battery exam. Investigators recovered a foreign DNA sample that later matched a sample Jackson provided "during an unrelated investigation," an arrest warrant dated Tuesday said.

The record didn't say whether the "unrelated investigation" was the assault of which he is accused of committing in a USF dorm five weeks later.

No mention was made of the March accusation when USF police arrested Jackson in connection with an attack a woman reported in the dorm May 1.

The Sheriff's Office said the March assault happened in the woman's off-campus apartment. She was in the bathroom putting things away when Jackson stood in the doorway and asked her multiple times to shower with him, a report said.

He removed his clothes as she repeatedly denied his requests, the report said. When she tried to leave, it said, he blocked the door and told her, "Nobody is going anywhere."

FIRST ARREST: LaDarrius Jackson arrested on sexual battery charge.

To appease Jackson, 6 feet 4 and 248 pounds, the woman began to wash her hair in her bathtub while remaining clothed, the Sheriff's Office said.

Then, the woman told detectives, Jackson grabbed her, forcefully removed her clothing and told her he was going to "give her a going-away present," the arrest warrant said. After forcing her to have sex, the woman told investigators, Jackson stayed to finish his laundry.

Afterward, Jackson made the woman drive to a nearby Target to buy an emergency contraceptive and ordered her to take it in his presence, the Sheriff's Office said. He then made her drive him to his on-campus dorm in USF's Holly Apartments.

That's the dormitory USF police say was the scene of the May 1 sexual assault.

In that case, USF police said Jackson forced a different woman to perform sex despite her physical and verbal efforts to resist him. She told detectives she refused his attempts that afternoon. He later pushed her into her room and onto her bed, she told detectives.

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Afterward, she immediately contacted USF housing staff. Jackson was arrested that night at Tampa International Airport. Spring semester had just ended and Jackson was about to board a plane home to Birmingham, Ala., campus police said.

He spent four nights in jail after his first arrest but only an hour after his second. He was released Wednesday on a $9,500 bond, the same amount that won his release on the initial charges.

News of Jackson's first arrest went viral on the Internet last week after a county judge set bond at $102,500 while scolding Jackson and USF's first-year football coach, Charlie Strong. The judge, Margaret Taylor, later recused herself, and a second judge slashed the bond.

JUDGE RIPS USF: USF alum takes LaDarrius Jackson, coach Charlie Strong to task.

Before this month, Jackson had never been arrested in Florida, according to state records.

Contact Anastasia Dawson at adawson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3377. Follow @adawsonwrites.