The Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s office dismissed four charges against Charlotte Hornets forward Miles Bridges on Tuesday relating to two separate incidents, according to publicly available documents obtained by The Athletic.
The filings, made in Mecklenburg County District Court, show that the district attorney dropped three charges against Bridges stemming from an October incident involving him and the mother of his children, who is also his ex-girlfriend. A criminal summons issued for Bridges alleged misdemeanor child abuse, injury to personal property and that he had violated a domestic violence protective order. Those charges were dismissed Thursday due to insufficient evidence, the prosecutor’s office said in a court filing.
The prosecutors said that contradictory statements provided by the accuser led to the dismissal. The accuser had initially told police that a woman had caused damage to her car, where she and her children were present, then gave a statement several days later that Bridges had caused the damage. She then gave another statement to prosecutors recently ahead of the trial that she was “unsure” how the damage was caused.
“Given the lack of sufficient evidence necessary to overcome the inconsistency of these accounts, the state would not be successful at trial,” the filing said.
Prosecutors also dismissed a separate charge against Bridges that he had violated a domestic violence protective order. A warrant for his arrest relating to that allegation had been issued on Jan. 2, 2023.
A court filing said this charge was also dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
The prosecutor alleged that Bridges had contacted the woman on several social media platforms, which violated a no-contact order from the court. But the woman, the prosecutor wrote, doesn’t have those messages anymore and cannot remember the contacts or its content. The filing also said that although the woman’s interaction with police was recorded by body cameras, the contact and content were not.
“Given her lack of memory and no other corroboration of the violation, the state would not be successful at trial,” the prosecutor said in the filing with the court.
Bridges is also still serving three years of probation from a plea deal with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. He pleaded no contest after a June 2022 domestic violence incident with his then-girlfriend. Bridges received no jail time through the plea deal. As part of the deal, Bridges agreed to a 10-year criminal protection order for the woman, weekly narcotics and marijuana testing and restitution, according to earlier court filings in this same case. The order is in place until Nov. 3, 2032.
The NBA suspended Bridges last April for 30 games for violating its domestic violence policy. He missed all of last season and tolled 20 of those games during that absence, and served the final 10 to begin this season after he re-signed with the Hornets over the summer.