ASU football linebacker Davon Durant has been dismissed from the football program, head coach Todd Graham told Sports Illustrated's Thayer Evans Wednesday.
Durant had been suspended indefinitely from the football program and had been appealing his expulsion following a March 7 arrest for which he was charged with three counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and one count of felony aggravated assault.
One witness in the reported domestic violence incident said he saw a man slam the woman’s head into the dashboard of a vehicle twice, while another witness said he was in his apartment when he heard a woman scream, according to the police report.
Durant's girlfriend has since recanted her statement to the police.
He pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct for the incident, and was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and domestic violence counseling.
“He’s done,” Graham told SI.com of Durant. “We parted ways. He put himself in that position. It’s a bad deal, but you’ve got to have accountability. We don’t just talk about character and discipline. We live it. No matter what the legal system does, our standards are high and our guys know that. They know they’re going to be held accountable.”
Durant, a 6-foot-2, 240 pound junior college transfer from Butler Community College (Kansas) and an early spring enrollee, was the first five-star signee in Graham's tenure at ASU.
This is the first notable arrest for the Sun Devils since Graham took over in Dec. 2011. Since Durant's arrest, freshman defensive lineman George Lea was arrested for an incident regarding the illegal use of a "BB gun" on campus.
“If you make exceptions, you end up with a team full of exceptions,” Graham told SI.com. “We have not compromised and held true to what our beliefs are. So we have a really strong identity as a team because of that. That’s why we’ve got a great chance this season.”
Update: July 15, 2015 at 7:04 p.m.
Durant responded to Wednesday's report that he had been dismissed on Twitter.
False info I am not dismissed .
— Davon Durant (@DurantDavon) July 16, 2015
ASU football opens its season against Texas A&M at NRG Stadium in Houston, Tex. on Sept. 5.
Reach the reporter at fardaya@asu.edu or follow @fardaya15 on Twitter.
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