A 42-year-old pro basketball player has been arrested in Kumamoto City after a female bar employee accused him of sexually assaulting her and stealing her underwear.
Gary Hamilton Kodera, who plays for the Kagawa Five Arrows, is suspected of kissing a woman in her 20s and groping her breasts at a local bar around 2:00 a.m. Saturday. Police also say he took a piece of her underwear.
He’d been drinking alone there since midnight. By the time of the alleged assault, it was just the two of them in the bar.
The case came out after a friend of the victim called emergency services and told dispatchers a pro basketball player had sexually assaulted her friend.
After his arrest on suspicion of nonconsensual indecency and theft, Kodera partly denied it. He told police everything with her was consensual, then added this: “I put the underwear in my bag, but I didn’t steal it.”
The timing could not have been worse for his team. The Five Arrows were in Kumamoto for two season-opening games against the Kumamoto Volters on the 26th and 27th.
Team representative Naoto Ikooka quickly apologized to people in Kumamoto Prefecture and to the Volters, saying he was sorry something like this happened right before such an important opening game.
Police are still investigating.