March 20, 2023 A California State University, Northridge basketball player faces battery on an officer and other charges after he allegedly punched a Fort Lauderdale police officer trying to break up a bar brawl.
By Angie DiMichele Source South Florida Sun-Sentinel Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Bikini-clad, bro-hugging Spring Breakers were interrupted Wednesday night at Rock Bar in Fort Lauderdale by a brawl between a security guard and a partying patron that escalated into an officer being punched in the face.
A 22-year-old Kentucky man, who officers took into a police cruiser shirtless and in his fruit-patterned bathing suit, faces charges of battery on an officer, resisting an officer with and without violence, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and disorderly intoxication, a probable cause affidavit said.
De’Sean Eikens was among the young crowd at the bar on Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard, which hosts Spring Break pool parties, shortly before 7 p.m. when Rock Bar security guard Cleveland Rahming, 26, of Lauderhill, tackled him to the ground and punched him in the face, body-worn camera released by the police department shows. Records and the video released by the police department do not detail what led up to the tackle.
Eikens and his friend Bradley Nalley, 21, of Indiana, punched Rahming in the face, the police report said.
Music still blaring in the background, a Fort Lauderdale Police officer kicked Eikens and another man with Eikens out of the bar. Eikens appeared to be drunk and on “an unknown substance,” the affidavit said.
The officer wrote in the affidavit that Eikens pushed his hands away and punched him twice in the face before the officer punched him back and tackled him to the ground and punched Eikens a second time.
“All right,” Eikens said once tackled to the ground, his white Versace glasses broken and nose bleeding. “I’m going home. I’m going home.”
A man yelled in the background for the officer to let Eikens go, the video shows, and Eikens said he couldn’t breathe.
“He’s talking, he’s breathing,” the officer said and told the shouting man in the background that he was not putting any weight on Eikens’ chest or body.
“Let him [expletive] go!” the man in the background yelled back.
Eikens asked the officer what he did.
“You hit me in the face!” the officer replied.
“Who hit you in the face?” Eikens said.
“You did!” the officer said.
Blood could be seen on the sidewalk near Eikens’ head. As the officer held Eikens by the arms while he laid on the ground on his back, Eikens gave a friend his mom’s number, the video shows.
Eikens was taken to Broward Health Medical Center where he was medically cleared before being booked at the Main Jail, the affidavit said.
He had a small cut on his knee, the police report said. The officer said he had a cut on his left elbow.
Eikens is on the 2022-23 men’s basketball roster at California State University, Northridge and is in his first season at the school, according to a biography on the team’s website. He previously played at the University of New Orleans and the University of North Dakota and went to high school in North Dakota.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone else involved in the fight will face charges. The officer’s report said Eikens, Nalley and Rahming “were mutual combatants.”