Former Southwest Baptist University student pleads guilty to assault

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (ABP) — A former football player at Southwest Baptist University pleaded guilty Jan. 25 to second-degree assault in a 2006 beating that left a Bolivar, Mo., man permanently disabled.

Rony Saintil, 27, of Del Ray Beach, Fla., accepted a plea bargain that reduced his charge from first-degree assault, a class A felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Under terms of his plea he could still get seven years, but the Bolivar, Mo., Herald-Free Press reported that Saintil's lawyer intended to ask for shock detention. That allows a defendant to receive probation after a short time in a correctional facility, or for a suspended sentence.

Police originally arrested four students attending the school affiliated with the Missouri Baptist Convention in connection with an incident outside a Springfield, Mo., nightclub. Police said a group of men were seen Oct. 13, 2006, kicking and punching 22-year-old Joshua Mincks of Bolivar, where SBU is located, in the head while he was pinned underneath a car. The incident took place in the parking lot outside of Cowboys 2000, a popular night spot for young people. 

Mincks suffered injuries, including a broken jaw. He was in a coma for three days and hospitalized for weeks. The Bolivar newspaper said he has since been classified as permanently disabled.

Because witnesses had fled the scene by the time police arrived, they did not have enough evidence to file charges. The university conducted its own internal investigation and dismissed an undisclosed number of students, citing federal law that says disciplinary action taken against a student is not public information.

Saintil was identified publicly when indictments handed down to him and another man, Henry Warren Patten, by a grand jury impaneled mainly to investigate crimes by gangs, were unsealed with their first court appearance in October of 2007.

Penny Speake, a Greene County, Mo., assistant prosecutor, said Patten's case is still pending with a pre-trial conference coming up soon. She said a third man charged in the incident, Alvin Pope, was recently extradited and his next court date is Feb. 2.

The crime rocked the county-seat town of Bolivar, with a population of about 11,000. Some questioned if the assault was racially motivated — the attackers were black and the victim white. It raised questions on the Southwest Baptist campus both about safety and recruiting standards for the SBU Bearcats football program. 

According to a Google search, Saintil, a 6-foot-5-inch, 215-pound wide receiver, attended Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Fla. He joined the team at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2001  before transferring to a junior college in Reedley, Calif.  He committed to Temple University in 2004 and was mentioned in a 2005 season preview. After his dismissal from SBU, Santil moved to the University of North Alabama, but he was academically ineligible to play. 
 
Southwest Baptist University football coach Jack Peavey resigned abruptly after just two years in 2007. The university declined to comment on the reasons he was leaving, but Peavey, a former NFL player who now is an assistant at Texas A&M University-Commerce, said in a letter to a Springfield newspaper it was because administrators would not permit him to do what was needed to make SBU competitive. The university is the only private school in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

Sentencing for Saintil is scheduled for April 23 in Greene County Circuit Court. A jury trial scheduled for him the week of Jan. 25 was canceled.

According to the Bolivar Herald-Free Press, Saintil acknowledged that he took part in the fight but his lawyer said the injuries to Mincks were caused by the actions of several individuals and that nobody knew for sure who caused them.

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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.