A former Bethel University football player acquitted in two 2019 sexual assault cases involving fellow students has now had a third one dismissed, with the prosecution saying they would be unable to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt if the case went to trial.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office on Monday dismissed its last case against Gideon Osamwonyi Erhabor, who was charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct and alleged to have assaulted a then-19-year-old woman at a house party in Roseville on Oct. 7, 2018.
The three cases were filed against Erhabor on Dec. 3, 2019, after the women reported to law enforcement on separate days in June 2019 that Erhabor had assaulted them in the fall and winter of 2018.
Erhabor was a student at the Christian college in Arden Hills from the fall of 2017 to fall 2018, when he was a running back on the football team. He moved back to his hometown of McKinney, Texas.
Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies interviewed Erhabor about the incidents in August 2019. While he acknowledged having sex with the three women, he said all the interactions were consensual, according to the criminal complaints.
He was arrested in his Texas hometown a day after the charges were filed and released from the Ramsey County jail after posting a $30,000 bond about a month later.
A jury in October 2022 found Erhabor not guilty of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for an incident with a then-21-year-old at a house party in Shoreview on Dec. 8, 2018.
In June, following a bench trial before Judge Joy Bartscher, Erhabor was acquitted of third- and fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct for an incident with a then-18-year-old woman in his dorm room on Sept. 11, 2018.
In her ruling, the judge wrote the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the interaction between the two was nonconsensual.
On Thursday, Erhabor’s attorney, assistant public defender Daniel Gonnerman, who represented the now 27-year-old in all three cases, said, “They’re finally over.”
“I appreciate that the prosecutor decided to take an objective view of the evidence and review the case, and decided not to pursue the case any further,” he added.
In a Thursday statement, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said the decision to dismiss “was made after a thorough review of the evidence and our inability to meet our burden of proving each element of the criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt as required by law.
“While we acknowledge the immediate disappointment for the victim in this case, we do not want this decision to hinder in any way victims of sexual assault in our community from reporting their assault to law enforcement.”
‘Not sure what happened’
The dismissed complaint gives the following account:
The woman reported to Ramsey County Sheriff’s investigators on June 7, 2019, that she had arrived at the off-campus house party on Oct. 7, 2018, and drank two strawberry-flavored alcohol canned drinks. She said she went outside and is “not sure what happened to her after that,” the complaint read.
The next morning, she woke up at a friend’s apartment wearing only a T-shirt and no underwear and was confused as to what happened the night before.
About seven weeks later, on Nov. 30, Erhabor went into her dorm room uninvited and climbed into bed with her. When she asked Erhabor what he thought he was doing, he said he was trying to play with her. She told him to stop, that she was not going to do anything sexual with him, to which he replied, “Why, it wasn’t like he had not seen ‘it’ before,” the complaint read.
When she asked him what he meant, Erhabor said they had sex in a bathroom the night of the October house party, and that he thought she didn’t like it because she had fallen asleep.
During the investigation, one student reported seeing the woman at the party and that she seemed fine at the start, but was stumbling and slurring her words about an hour or two later.
Another student said he brought the woman to his friend’s apartment to watch her because she had thrown up. He said that when she awoke the next morning, she was confused and not able to recall the previous night.
‘This experience tested my faith’
In September, Gonnerman, Erhabor’s attorney, challenged probable cause that he committed the alleged offense and asked for the case to be dismissed.
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Gonnerman wrote in the motion to the court that the woman testified in Erhabor’s jury trial in his other case that “she had no recollection of what occurred but speculated that she would not have consented to sexual conduct with Defendant.”
No one else witnessed the alleged crime, Gonnerman wrote, adding the prosecution “has no confession of a crime by Defendant nor any evidence that a crime occurred.”
Gonnerman said he emailed Erhabor about the dismissal on Monday and he “expressed great gratitude to me that I’ve helped him through this process.”
Gonnerman said Erhabor gave him permission to share the email, which read: “This experience tested my faith, my resilience and my ability to keep moving forward even when it felt like everything was against me. I’m focused on rebuilding my peace, moving forward with my life, and continuing to grow as a person. I’m grateful to finally be able to look ahead with clarity and optimism.”
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