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Trial for former Ducks player starts Tuesday

By Chelsea Deffenbacher, The Register-Guard
Published: November 19, 2019, 9:01am

EUGENE, Ore. — The trial for a former University of Oregon Ducks football player is scheduled to begin Tuesday morning in Lane County Circuit Court.

Colt Keliikoa Lyerla, 27, faces charges of second-degree assault, fourth-degree assault, coercion, strangulation and unlawful possession of heroin.

He was arrested in June after Eugene police were called to the Eugene home of Lyerla’s girlfriend, whom he had allegedly assaulted and strangled. The woman was transported with non-life-threatening injuries to a local hospital. June 17

Eugene police looked for Lyerla and, With the help of Springfield Police officers, Eugene police located him June 18, the day after the alleged assault, at a Thurston Road home in Springfield.

“He attempted to flee and a Taser was used to take him into custody,” Eugene police spokesman John Hankemeier said at the time of the arrest, “and he was found in possession of heroin.”

Lyerla has been an inmate of the Lane County Jail since June 18. In September, his request to be be released on his own recognizance or have his bail reduced was denied by a judge.

Lyerla’s charges are considered to have been committed under aggravated circumstances because he was on probation or post-prison supervision at the time of the alleged assault.

Lyerla was one of Oregon’s highly touted tight ends, but he quit the football team for “personal reasons” in October 2013, one day after serving a one-game suspension. Days later, he was no longer an enrolled student at the university and was arrested in October 2013 by the Lane County Interagency Narcotics Team after he was seen snorting cocaine while parked in a car near West Seventh Avenue and Polk Street. He was found guilty and was sentenced to 20 days in jail with credit for time served and two years probation.

Since that time, Lyerla has had several run-ins with law enforcement, including convictions in Washington County for possession of heroin in 2016 and 2018, and multiple counts of forgery in 2017.

Lyerla was a five-star recruit who was named to the U.S. Army All-American game following his senior season at Hillsboro High School, where he was a standout running back and linebacker.The university said in a release after Lyerla quit the football team that he plans to focus on a pro career instead of transferring to another school. The 6-foot-5, 250-pound junior could have declared for the NFL draft the following year and had been listed as a potential first-round pick in some mock drafts before the season. “I love everyone at Oregon; everyone’s on good terms, I believe,” Lyerla said in a statement from the athletic department at the time. “Just for my own benefit, it was time to move on.”

That decision, however, was something Lyerla later called “a mistake.””It’s something I deeply, deeply regret and it’s a mistake I’ll have to live with the rest of my life,” Lyerla said in 2014.

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