Woman in ‘mother of the year’ shirt gave umpire a black eye after game, MS cops say
.jpg "“She blindsided (the umpire) and hit her in the face,” the police chief said.")
A woman wearing a “mother of the year” shirt is accused of punching an umpire in the face after a softball game, giving her a black eye, police in Mississippi said.
The woman was disrupting the game during a tournament on the evening of April 9 at the Sportsplex in Laurel,, police Chief Tommy Cox told McClatchy News.
Sportsplex staff asked the 32-year-old woman from Hattiesburg to leave after she began to curse and shout, according to WLBT. Her anger was directed toward the umpire, Cox said.
She left the game, but not the sports complex.. When the umpire walked off the field after the game, the woman approached her.
“She blindsided (the umpire) and hit her in the face,” Cox said. The punch left the umpire with a black eye.
The female umpire, Kristie Moore, was filling in for an umpire who had fallen ill before the game, WLBT reported. Moore has called games for 10 years, according to the outlet.
“It’s ridiculous,” Moore told WLBT after the attack. “The verbal abuse. And even now, the physical abuse ... enough is enough. I also staff every USFA tournament in the state of Mississippi with umpires and it gets harder and harder to staff these tournaments because no one wants to listen to the verbal abuse and run the risk of what happened to me happening to them.”
The woman accused of punching Moore left the complex after the assault, Cox told McClatchy News. Officers located and arrested her before she got onto Interstate 59 toward Hattiesburg. The woman was brought to the station and charged with a simple assault, Cox said.
The woman was released on bond and banned from all recreational facilities in Laurel, WDAM reported.
She likely won’t face jail time, Cox said, considering it was a first offense misdemeanor.
Mississippi legislators considered a bill that would have elevated an assault on a sports umpire to aggravated assault, a felony, but the bill died. Assaults on principals, teachers, social workers and school bus drivers are considered felonies under Mississippi law.
Cox wasn’t able to confirm if the woman was a parent of a player, but did note that the woman was wearing a “mother of the year” shirt when she was brought into the station.
“This is way outside the norm, we don’t generally have these types of incidents and we obviously don’t tolerate that,” Cox told McClatchy News. “It’s always going to end in handcuffs if we can get you because it’s not what young kids need to see.”
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Woman in ‘mother of the year’ shirt gave umpire a black eye after game, MS cops say."
