A University of Florida football player has helped stop the alleged sexual assault of an unconscious woman behind a garbage bin outside a bar.
Cristian Garcia told First Coast News he was taking out the rubbish on Thursday morning from the bar where he works in a security role when he noticed a couple having sex.
He first thought it was consensual, but then saw the woman was unconscious. Garcia said the man's friends were watching, and did nothing to help. The incident was videotaped.
Garcia said he and another witness walked up and stopped it.
"I turned around and pulled the guy by the shoulder and said 'Get off.' That pretty much ended the situation then," Garcia told The Gainesville Sun.
"He was intoxicated and attempted to throw some punches, but he slipped and busted his face on the wall."
Police later arrested Christopher Shaw, 34, and charged him with sexual battery of the 19-year-old woman.
Gainesville police spokesman Ben Tobias confirmed that Garcia and Leroyea Simmons helped stop the incident and identified Shaw in a photo line-up.
Garcia's intervention came after a recent spate of sexual assault cases nationally involving student-athletes.
On July 15, former Vanderbilt football player Cory Batey was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted of taking part in the gang rape of an unconscious female student in June 2013.
Last month, a judge sentenced former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to six months in jail and ordered him to register as a sex offender for life after a jury convicted him of raping a student behind a campus dumpster in January 2015. Prosecutors had sought a six-year sentence.
