An assistant basketball coach at Wake Forest University in North Carolina faces assault charges after punching a tourist and leaving him mortally injured on a New York street over the weekend, cops said Thursday.
Jamill Jones, 35, surrendered to police early Thursday, with a lawyer at his side, just two days doctors took Florida tourist Sandor Szabo off life support.
Szabo was returning to his Long Island City, Queens, hotel after attending his stepsister's wedding when he banged on the window of a parked SUV at 1:15 a.m. on Sunday.
His brother told the Daily News he may have thought the SUV was a cab, and he was trying to get the driver's attention. Instead, the driver punched him, sending him flying backward, cops said. His head slammed into the sidewalk, and he never regained consciousness.
Jones faces a misdemeanor assault charge. It's unclear if he'll face more serious charges as the investigation progresses.
Jones joined the coaching staff at Wake Forest in 2017 after working at Central Florida, VCU and Florida Gulf Coast. Prior to coaching, he spent five years with Team Takeover in Washington D.C., a leading AAU program. He played college ball at Arkansas Tech.
Jones' Twitter account has been deactivated.
"We have just been made aware of this matter and we are gathering information," a Wake Forest Athletic spokesman said Thursday night. "We will make a further statement after we learn more about the matter."
Jones also worked as a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
"I'm that guy who is going to coach you," Jones told the Journal. "I'm going to coach you hard. But I'm going to love you too, on the flip side of that. Because I know that's what a lot of these kids need.
"My experiences aren't scars to me. They are lessons. And that's the way they should be. We can't control our upbringing. We can't control the experiences we are forced into, in a lot of ways.
