WATCH: Running back Adrian Peterson turned himself into police amid allegations he beat his four-year-old son with a wooden switch.
MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson has been booked and released on $15,000 bond from a Texas jail on a charge alleging that he spanked one of his sons with a wooden switch.
Peterson was processed at the Montgomery County jail, near Houston, according to a sheriff’s office spokesman. It wasn’t immediately clear where he went afterward: There was no activity outside of his home near Houston and a man who answered the door at his home near Minneapolis said Peterson wasn’t there.
The star running back won’t be taking the field Sunday for Minnesota’s home opener against the New England. Shortly after the news of the indictment broke Friday, the Vikings announced that Peterson had been deactivated for the Patriots game.
WATCH: First Assistant District Attorney Phil Grant outlines the investigation into allegations that NFL player Adrian Peterson hit his son with a wooden switch.
The Minnesota Vikings benched Peterson for Sunday’s game after his attorney said he had been indicted by a Texas grand jury on a charge of child abuse.
Attorney Rusty Hardin says the charge accuses Peterson of using a branch, or switch, to spank his son. He says Peterson has co-operated with authorities and “used his judgment as a parent to discipline his son.” Hardin says Peterson regrets the incident but never intended to harm the boy.
The allegations come during a week in which the NFL has been under heavy scrutiny for the way it handled a domestic violence case involving former Ravens running back Ray Rice and his then-fiancee.
READ MORE: Ray Rice case highlights NFL’s domestic abuse problem
Peterson grew up in little Palestine, Texas. When he was 7, his 8-year-old brother Brian was riding his bicycle when he was killed by a drunk driver. Years later, his half-brother, Chris Paris, was shot and killed the night before Peterson worked out for scouts and coaches at the NFL combine.
His mother, Bonita Jackson, was a former Olympic sprinting hopeful and his father, Nelson Peterson, spent eight years behind
bars for laundering drug money yet still managed to be a positive influence on his son’s life.
Last season, not long after finding out that he had a two-year-old son living in South Dakota, Peterson rushed to the hospital after authorities said the boy was brutally beaten by his mother’s boyfriend. The boy died, and a 28-year-old man is scheduled to go on trial next month on second-degree murder charges in the case.
Hardin, the defence attorney, is a familiar name in sports circles. He successfully defended Roger Clemens in his recent perjury trial over the alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs and two years ago represented Los Angeles Lakers forward Jordan Hill, who was sentenced to one year of probation after pleading no contest to assaulting his former girlfriend.
He has worked with Peterson before, too: In 2012, he said Peterson was the victim after the player was charged with misdemeanour resisting arrest following an incident at a Houston nightclub.
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