Billy Busch, the 58-year-old great-grandson of beer baron Adolphus Busch, has been charged with simple assault after allegedly shoving an 11-year-old boy into a wall during a basketball practice at Chaminade College Preparatory School in Creve Coeur, Missouri. The boy's nose began bleeding after his head struck the wall, and Busch is due to appear in Creve Coeur municipal court on March 28, 2018.
According to the St. Louis Riverfront Times, the confrontation began in November 2017 when Busch allegedly grabbed the sixth grader and forced him backward out of the gymnasium, then dragged him by the front of his shirt, pinned him against a wall near a stairwell, and pushed him into it. The boy told police Busch swore at him and held him by his collar, and surveillance footage from the school showed the two boys involved in the original scuffle shoving and trying to slap each other before Busch intervened. Busch reportedly shouted, “What do you think you're doing to my kid?” and later, “You fucker!” as the encounter escalated. The boy's father pulled Busch off his son, and a basketball coach removed Busch from the gym; the school then removed both Busch and his son from the facility and contacted Creve Coeur police, who mailed Busch a summons for simple assault.
Busch's Version of Events
Busch told police the boy had punched his son, mouthed off, and tried to hit him, and the boy told police he slapped Busch on the temple. Busch's attorney told police his client would not come in to give a statement, and Busch ultimately declined to provide one. In a statement issued after the charge was announced, per the Riverfront Times, Busch maintained through his attorney that he did not punch or physically harm the boy and said he acted to defend his son from a bully who had slapped him in the face, according to reporting by KSDK.
Busch's attorney, Scott Rosenblum, said his client acted to protect his son and that school surveillance video showed Busch acted without maliciousness. Derek Falb, the boy's father, said the school acted swiftly and decisively, but maintained that Busch's son was the initial aggressor. Falb has said he plans to cooperate with and monitor the prosecution but does not intend to pursue a civil suit against Busch.
A Family History of Legal Trouble
The case adds to a string of publicized legal episodes involving Busch, who stands six feet tall and weighs 195 pounds. He was found not guilty of assault in a 1982 incident at a Naugles drive-through in Fenton, Missouri, and was not charged, according to press reports, in connection with a 1981 bar-brawl incident in which he allegedly bit off another man's earlobe. His older brother, Peter Busch, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received five years' probation in 1976 following the accidental shooting death of a friend, as detailed by Distractify.
Busch ultimately resolved the municipal case in June 2018 by pleading guilty to a peace disturbance charge rather than simple assault, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time. By then, Busch was already a familiar face locally as the founder of Kräftig, a St. Louis-based beer company in whose commercials he appeared. That venture, launched after the Busch family lost ownership and management control of Anheuser-Busch when it was sold to Belgium-based InBev in a 2008 takeover, did not survive the decade: William K. Busch Brewing Co. shut down and dissolved the Kräftig and Kräftig Light lines in 2019 after eight years, citing declining demand and pricing pressure, according to Brewbound.
From Courtroom to Reality TV
Busch's public profile shifted again in March 2020, when MTV premiered “The Busch Family Brewed,” a 10-episode reality series following Busch Sr., his wife Christi, and their seven children on their 700-acre estate outside St. Louis, according to Fox Business. The family's legal entanglements have extended beyond the basketball-practice case; between 2016 and 2017, Busch and his brother Adolphus fought four of their siblings in court over the historic 281-acre Grant's Farm estate, successfully blocking a planned sale to the Saint Louis Zoo Association, KSDK reported.
Despite losing operational control of Anheuser-Busch, the family's wealth remains vast: Forbes estimated the Busch family's total net worth at $13.4 billion in 2020, ranking them among the wealthiest families in the country, per Business Insider. Chaminade College Preparatory School, the site of the alleged assault, is an independent, all-boys Catholic day and boarding school founded in 1910 and run by the Marianist order for grades six through 12, according to background compiled on Wikipedia.
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