England rugby star tasered and arrested in Spain

By Ben Coles & Gerard Couzens of the Daily Telegraph UK

England rugby international Billy Vunipola was tasered and arrested in a Spanish bar in the early hours of Sunday morning local time.

The incident took place in a bar in Palma called Epic, with extraordinary CCTV footage showing a topless, laughing Vunipola, 31, surrounded by officers and the bar’s security after the area was cleared by police.

The England and Saracens No 8 was held overnight by police and fined for disobedience and assaulting a police officer. He has also been given a four-month suspended prison sentence.

Telegraph Sport has been informed that Vunipola was previously teetotal for almost two years before falling off the wagon, having made that decision to give up alcohol in order to be at his best on the field ahead of last year’s Rugby World Cup. Vunipola is also understood to have been immediately apologetic with the police officers.

Vunipola played for Saracens on Friday night and was in Majorca as part of a team social for players and management because Saracens have a week off given that they are not part of this coming weekend’s European semi-finals.

Vunipola, who is 6ft 2in and weighs more than 20 stone, required a second taser volt in order to be handcuffed by eight police officers at around 4.30am on Sunday morning, after the first volt hit his wallet. He was later taken to nearby Son Espases Hospital where he was reportedly sedated and bound to his bed surrounded by hospital guards and police officers.

Billy Vunipola: "Unfortunate misunderstanding"
A spokesman for the National Police of Majorca stated that “security staff were unable to restrain him or remove him from the premises”, which led to police being called before Vunipola “pushed and slapped an officer”, injuring their wrist and finger.

In a statement released on Monday, Vunipola said: “I can confirm I was involved in an unfortunate misunderstanding when I was leaving a club in Mallorca on Sunday, which got out of hand. Contrary to media reports, there was no violence, no fight and I did not threaten anybody at any stage, with bottles or chairs or anything else. I was charged with resisting the law and, following an ‘express trial, I have paid a fine of €240. The Spanish police investigation is now closed, and I am flying back to the UK today. I will obviously cooperate with the Saracens internal process and unreservedly apologise for any inconvenience to all involved.”

Bar owner: "Situation was getting tense"
The bar’s owner, Toni Rocha, praised the police and his doormen for dealing with a “very difficult’ and “very tense” situation, while backing up Vunipola’s statement that there was no violence and denying that Vunipola had threatened customers and staff with bottles and chairs.

Rocha said that Vunipola had arrived at the bar at around 3am with another player which Telegraph Sport believes to be prop Marco Riccioni.

“It was just Billy and his friend but when they ordered the first round they asked for six Amarettos with orange juice and freshly squeezed lime,” Rocha said. “I know because I served them. I’m pretty sure they drank them between the two of them, with Billy having four and the friend the other two.

“The friend was fine but Billy started becoming a problem as he became drunker. I had to ask him to put his top on at one point when he took it off while he was at the bar.

“He didn’t threaten customers or staff with bottles or bar stalls or anything like that but he was annoying other customers by pushing them, not in a violent way, but elbowing them and bothering them.

“He put his shirt on when I asked him to first time round. His friend who was co-operative at all times helped him put it back on. But then he took it off a second time and then a third and we decided to call police.

“I’d already got the doormen involved to try to get him to leave and his friend was assisting us but there was just no way we could get him to abandon the premises and the situation was becoming very tense and we saw we were going to have a problem if we tried to use physical force to get him out. I warned his friend I was going to call police and he said: ‘Do what you have to do.’

“We thought he was going to calm down when he saw uniformed officers arrive but when the first police appeared on the scene he confronted them and they had to call for back-up.

“It was around 4am and we still had more than an hour left before we were supposed to close. When the back-up arrived the police told us to clear the bar, put the lights on and cut the music.

“The rugby player reacted by confronting the officers when they went to talk to him and insult them. I heard him saying ‘f------ cops’. He also hit one of them with his shirt in his hand.

“They tried to get him out and couldn’t until they tasered him. He laughed the first time they went to taser him, it was like a film, and I heard the words ‘Another one’ and the second time round he fell to the ground and the officers immobilised him and put wrist-ties on him.”

Summing up the incident, Rocha added: “It could have turned out very different and ended very badly because we were dealing with a strong man who was very drunk and was acting inappropriately and refusing requests for him to leave. We felt things could have got broken or he could have assaulted someone if we tried to force him out.

“I didn’t feel frightened, it was more a feeling of impotence that we couldn’t get him to abandon the premises. But some clients, especially women clients, were feeling frightened and very uncomfortable.”

Police: Second taser shot "did the job"
The full statement from a police spokesman read: “In the early hours of [Sunday] morning, at 4.30am, we arrested a 31-year-old foreign man on suspicion of a crime of disobedience and assaulting a police officer.

“The events took place in a leisure establishment on the seafront in Palma, when a man was causing altercations inside the establishment.

“The man would not listen to reason and confronted the rest of the customers, and the security staff were unable to restrain him or remove him from the premises.

“The police were alerted and the officers, on seeing the man, who was shirtless and making gestures with his hands, cleared the premises. It was then that he confronted the police and attempted to assault the officers.

“The police officers tried at all times to get him to calm down, but the man would not listen to reason. At that moment, the man pushed and slapped an officer and a policeman pulled out his electric stun gun and fired a first time although the gun didn’t discharge.

“It hit him in his wallet which meant it didn’t discharge as it hadn’t hit his muscles. The two prongs have to land on someone’s body to send out electricity and because the wallet got in the way the stun gun didn’t discharge.

“A second projectile was then fired, which did the job, and it was then that the officers jumped on him and proceeded to immobilise him by shackling him, later taking him to Son Espases hospital for assessment and arrest.

“[On Sunday] afternoon he was taken to court and released on bail pending an ongoing investigation.”

Saracens: "We’ll deal with this"
Vunipola, 31, was born in Australia to Tongan parents, moved to Wales when he was a child and won a scholarship to Harrow School. He started his professional career with Wasps before moving to Saracens.

The last of his 75 caps for England was in the Rugby World Cup semi-final defeat bv South Africa last year, but he was not selected for Steve Borthwick’s squad for this year’s Six Nations.

Vunipola is widely expected to leave Saracens for Montpellier next season. That move will effectively end any hopes of an international recall, because England players based overseas are ineligible for the national team.

Saracens said in a statement: “Saracens is aware of an incident involving Billy Vunipola in Majorca. We will of course deal with this incident internally, and will not make any further comment until then.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission