Boxing star Gervonta Davis named as driver in hit-and-run that injured three
Gervonta Davis, the two-division world champion and one of boxing’s biggest stars, was the driver in a November hit-and-run accident in downtown Baltimore that injured at least three people, according to a police report obtained by the Guardian on Friday.
The Baltimore Sun first reported Davis’s alleged involvement in the crash citing the incident report, which had been released by police earlier this week with the names of all involved parties redacted. Charges have yet to been filed in the case nearly four months after it took place.
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According to the unredacted report, Davis was behind the wheel of a 2020 Lamborghini Urus SUV with two other passengers at around 1.53am on 5 November when it ran a red light and struck a 2004 Toyota Solara at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr and Washington boulevards in the city’s Ridgely’s Delight neighborhood. All three then fled the scene on foot, authorities said.
Davis, who is listed by police as “at fault” in the report, was identified as the driver by eyewitnesses, as well as surveillance footage from the scene.
According to authorities, the Toyota’s airbags deployed and it was “destroyed”. One of the four passengers inside suffered a suspected serious injury, two others were listed as having suspected minor injuries and the fourth was listed as having a possible injury, the report said.
The Toyota passengers, two women aged 18 and 19 and two males aged 20 and 18, were taken to University Hospital for their injuries, police said.
Davis, 26, has not been charged and authorities said the investigation is “ongoing”.
“The investigation into the hit-and-run accident is still ongoing,” Lindsey Eldridge, the Baltimore police department’s chief spokesperson said. “The department has turned over findings to the state’s attorney’s office, and we are working closely to gather and determine any charges that may be pending as a result of this incident.”
A spokesperson for Baltimore city state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby confirmed the case remains under investigation.
Neither Davis nor his promoter immediately responded to messages requesting comment from the Guardian.
The accident took place five days after Davis defeated Léo Santa Cruz by sixth-round knockout to retain his World Boxing Association lightweight championship and take Santa Cruz’s WBA junior lightweight title at the Alamodome in San Antonio. The fight was Davis’s first as a pay-per-view headliner, marking his arrival as one of boxing’s top-tier attractions. Fliers circulating on social media in the days after the bout advertised a celebration for Davis on the night of the accident at Medusa, a downtown nightclub roughly a half-mile from the site of the crash.
The report said that Davis was “possibly injured” in the collision but did not cite a basis. On 2 February, Davis wrote on Twitter that he suffered a hand injury during sparring before posting a photo of an X-ray the next week indicating he was fit.
The incident was not the prizefighter’s first run-in with the law. In February 2020, Davis surrendered to police in Florida on a charge of simple battery domestic violence after a video widely circulated on social media allegedly showed him choking the mother of his child at a charity basketball game on the campus of the University of Miami. A trial date in that case is scheduled for next week.
Davis, a protégé of Floyd Mayweather Jr who is widely regarded as one of the sport’s most gifted young athletes, is undefeated in 24 professional fights with 23 wins coming inside the distance. Since his sensational knockout of Santa Cruz, he’s been linked to potential big-money fights with Ryan García, Teófimo López, Devin Haney and Manny Pacquiao.
A west Baltimore native who learned to box under the trainer Calvin Ford, who inspired the Cutty character in the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, Davis first rose to national prominence when he became boxing’s second-youngest world champion at just 22 years old with a knockout of José Pedraza to capture the IBF junior lightweight title in 2017.
