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Jameis Winston ‘Grabbed Uber Driver’s Crotch’ While Waiting for a Burrito: Lawsuit

The notorious Tampa Bay QB is facing a new round of legal trouble, this time for an alleged late-night assault on his driver in an Arizona restaurant drive-through.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston is facing yet another sexual-assault lawsuit, this time by an Uber driver in Arizona who accused him of groping her in 2016.

The eight-page complaint was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court and identifies the plaintiff as “Kate,” who claims Winston “became belligerent” as soon as he entered her car in Scottsdale at 2 a.m. in March 2016, shouted homophobic slurs and demanded that they go to a fast-food drive-through before he allegedly grabbed her crotch.

Winston was “clearly in a poor mood,” according to the complaint, and quickly demanded a burrito. When Kate asked where he wanted to be driven, he allegedly responded: “I don’t care, I just want a burrito.”

While the two were waiting on the food at a fast-food Mexican restaurant called Los Betos, Winston—who was in the front passenger seat—reached over and “placed his fingers between her legs and pressed them firmly against” her genitals over her yoga pants, the complaint claims.

“What’s up with that?” she allegedly asked. Then Winston removed his fingers, according to the suit, and she dropped him off at a local hotel.

Kate did not want to rebuke him more aggressively because she was “frightened, having just been sexually assaulted by a man who had already been highly belligerent,” the lawsuit states.

Kate has said she reported the encounter to Uber the day after it happened. She is seeking $75,000 in “damages in the nature of emotional distress and future therapy expenses,” according to the lawsuit.

The National Football League announced in June that an investigation into the encounter determined the Heisman Trophy winner touched the woman “in an inappropriate and sexual manner without her consent.” Despite repeated denials of the incident over several months, Winston this summer publicly apologized to Kate after the league called her account “consistent and credible.”

Winston, now 24, has not been criminally charged in the encounter but was hit with a three-game suspension and required to “obtain a clinical evaluation” for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy.

It’s not the first incident for Winston. In December 2012, he was accused of raping a fellow student at Florida State University. A civil suit brought by that victim against Winston was settled in December 2016. In addition to that settlement, the university paid out $950,000 in another lawsuit related to the same alleged sexual assault.

“[Kate] is unimpressed by his continued lack of honesty or awareness into his behavior,” her attorney, John Clune, told the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday. “Maybe a more direct financial penalty will get his attention.”

“She knows that she might be just a speed bump for him in his football career, but she is not going to be a small one,” he added.

Winston’s representatives were said to have declined comment on the case to local outlets but told ESPN that they anticipated the suit, noting, “As for legal representation, Jameis has guidance. He has a good group of professionals around him right now.”

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Olivia Messer

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