Fighter Floyd Mayweather Jr was arrested on Friday on a theft charge stemming from a domestic violence complaint by his former girlfriend, Las Vegas police said.
Mayweather’s lawyer, Richard Wright, said Mayweather is accused of taking an iPhone from Josie Harris, his former girlfriend and the mother of three of his children.
Wright denied the allegations against the fighter and said Mayweather surrendered to authorities and would cooperate in the investigation.
Mayweather was booked on a grand larceny charge at the Clark County jail, Las Vegas Police Officer Bill Cassell said. He was later released on US$3,000 bail, the 33-year-old boxer declining to comment as he departed.
Mayweather could face up to five years in state prison if he is convicted of taking items valued at less than US$2,500.
He is scheduled for an initial court appearance on Nov. 9.
On Thursday, Harris made a police complaint and sought a Family Court protection order, claiming Mayweather pulled her hair, punched her in the head and twisted her arm while she screamed for their children, who range in age from seven to 10 years old, to call 911.
Police said on Thursday that Harris was treated at a Las Vegas hospital for minor injuries.
“Please order Floyd Mayweather to not try and contact me,” Harris wrote in an application for a protection order that said the couple separated in May after living together for seven years.
“Floyd has threatened to have other people do harm to me as well, and if [there] is a way I can be protected from that, please help me,” she says in the document.
Mayweather was acquitted by a Nevada jury in July 2005 after being accused of hitting and kicking Harris during an quarrel outside a Las Vegas nightclub.
Harris, then 25, recanted her allegations and testified that she lied to police because she was angry that Mayweather had left her for another woman.
However, Mayweather has faced other battery and violence charges.
In 2002, he was convicted of misdemeanor battery stemming from a fight with two women at a Las Vegas nightclub, receiving a suspended one-year jail sentence.
He was fined in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in February 2005 and ordered to perform community service after pleading no contest to misdemeanor assault and battery for a bar fight.
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