Ex-Bulldogs guard Pettis arrested in courtroom

By Joshua D. Scroggin

Former Fresno State point guard Terry Pettis was arrested in a Fresno County Superior courtroom Wednesday after not completing required batterer’s intervention counseling stemming from misdemeanor vandalism of his former girlfriend’s car and battery charges in October.

“ When he pled guilty to hitting the car,” Pettis’s attorney Ernest Kinney said, “the main thing he had to do was a 52-week anger management class.”

After Pettis’s Oct. 8 sentencing, Kinney said, Pettis completed six weeks of the program before leaving and entering another anger management/substance abuse program.

Pettis then returned to the Bulldogs, but when he was suspended and eventually dismissed from the team, he did not resume the counseling, Kinney said.

“ Everything went to heck for him,” Kinney said. “He lost his scholarship and left school. Since he wasn’t taking the class, judge [David] Gottlieb put him in custody.”

Pettis was benched midway through the first half of the Bulldogs’ double overtime loss at Louisiana Tech on Feb. 5 for what coach Ray Lopes said was a poor attitude—despite the fact Pettis was the team’s leading scorer to that point.

The next day, Lopes announced Pettis had been suspended for the remainder of the season, and Pettis was sent back to Fresno while the team continued its road trip. He was averaging 12.8 points per game.

Pettis’s bail was set at $40,000 Wednesday, but Kinney said Pettis will remain in custody until his next court hearing April 21, when he will reappear before Gottlieb. He must show he is continuing the counseling before he can be released.

“ I think it’s going to be 100 percent that he’s going to be released if he’s back in a program,” Kinney said. “I really feel he needs to get out of here.”

Here is Fresno, and where Pettis needs to go is back to his father’s home in Minnesota where he has a job waiting and can straighten his life back out, Kinney said. It all depends on whether he can get accepted to a program in Minnesota before Wednesday.

“ He may be going back to Minnesota,” Kinney said. “He’s lost everything here.”

Pettis was initially suspended from the basketball team after an incident in late September at his girlfriend’s home where he reportedly hit her in the back and later damaged her car.

“If I was put in jail for a week, I’d think about what the judge had to say,” Kinney said. “Terry’s a good kid. He just needs to get some things straightened out.”