IK Enemkpali has been through a lot off the field, especially when you consider that he is only 24. Much of what the NFL linebacker has dealt with has been his own fault, but should we blame him for punching the person who allegedly catfished him?
While Enemkpali was still in college in 2011, he missed the first game of Louisiana Tech’s season after undergoing hand surgery. According to a police report obtained by Outside the Lines, Enemkpali injured the hand when he punched a man he believed was a women after he arranged to have sex with her.
Enemkpali had been suspended from the Louisiana Tech football team five months earlier after he struck an off-duty police officer at a bar. He was charged with battery on an officer and disturbing the peace. Both that and the catfishing incident scared some NFL teams away from him.
But back to the catfishing incident. As the story goes, Enemkpali began exchanging messages with a woman on Facebook who went by “Missy Lee.” He says she offered to perform oral sex on him if he went to her house, but when he got there he was greeted by a person “covered head-to-toe in a blanket” and the lights off. The former sixth-round pick said he left because he felt uneasy, but he was later convinced by Missy Lee over the phone to return.
But Enemkpali returned to the house after “Missy Lee” called him and convinced him to come back. When he arrived, the person wearing the blanket still refused to remove it and refused to turn on the lights. When a cellphone in the room rang, “the screen lit up the room enough to see that the person under the blanket had facial hair,” the report states. Enemkpali said another person had also entered the room.
“Enemkpali stated that he felt that he was being ‘set up’ for a robbery of some type,” the police report states. “Enemkpali stated that fearing for his safety, he then struck the subject in the blanket. Enemkpali stated that after he struck this person, their voice changed to that of a male. Enemkpali stated that he then left the residence through the window.”
Enemkpali said he began receiving threatening text messages after the incident demanding money. The “Missy Lee” person accused him of knocking her teeth out and demanded $1,000 or she was going to the police. Investigators later traced the phone to a man named Ketryn Anderson, and Ruston Deputy Chief of Police Clint Williams said he believes Anderson was “attempting to use Enemkpali’s prior criminal history and tenuous status with the Louisiana Tech football team as leverage to force him to pay money.”
While we can’t exactly blame Enemkpali for reacting to the catfishing situation the way he did, you can understand why teams were alarmed with how much he loves throwing his fist around and putting himself in potentially troubling situations. Although one New York Jets source indicated that Geno Smith may have deserved what he got from Enemkpali, there seems to be a pattern of behavior for the 24-year-old.
