Former Seton Hall basketball standout Michael Nzei has has been cleared on charges he restrained and sexually assaulted a woman in his Newark, N.J. home on Christmas Day 2021.
A lawyer for the former power forward told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday that charges were voluntarily dropped by the prosecution “just days prior to the commencement of the trial.”
The 28-year-old MBA graduate and current Goldman Sachs exec had been accused of second-degree sexual assault, third-degree criminal restraint and simple assault against a woman who said she met Nzei at a bar on Christmas Eve. She claimed she then drove him to his apartment where she was latter attacked, according to NJ.com.
The 2019 Big East scholar-athlete of the year initially told investigators he was home with COVID-19 that holiday season. He then reportedly recalled having rough but consensual sex with a woman he met at a bar.
The alleged victim told investigators she drank wine with Nzei in his home and rebuffed his advances before the 6-foot-8 jock forced himself on her. When the former Pirates star fell asleep, his unidentified accuser contacted her mother, who alerted police.
She also asked his building’s concierge to phone law enforcement. Cops said the accuser’s face was bruised when they spoke with her.
But on June 3, the indictment against Nzei was tossed “in its entirety by motion of the prosecutor” shortly before his trial was set to begin, NJ.com reports.
The defendant’s lawyer, Patrick Toscano, told the outlet “Michael was wrongly accused of and indicted for offenses which neither had any basis in reality nor could be proven in the first instance.”
Toscano told NJ.com Nzei “is yet another example” of a standout athlete and businessman “who was dragged through the mud merely because of his success on the basketball court and later in the corporate world.”
Nzei’s LInkedIn page says the former student-athlete joined Goldman Sachs in December 2021 and was recently promoted to a vice president position.
University of Illinois basketball star Terrence Shannon was acquitted on a rape charge last week after a woman in Kansas accused him of sexually assaulting her in a bar. His name could be called during this week’s NBA Draft.