A 64-year-old Richmond man is facing felony abduction and misdemeanor assault charges after police say he tied his wife to a chair and left her in the basement of their home so he could watch a football game upstairs. Terry Ward was arrested after officers responded to his Maplewood Avenue home near Byrd Park on the night of Sunday, Oct. 11, following a domestic call.
Officers who arrived at the scene say they found Ward's wife in the basement of the home, in the 2200 block of Maplewood Avenue, while he was located upstairs. According to a criminal complaint cited by wtvr.com, Ward admitted that he had tied his wife to a chair and placed her in the basement. Police noted that the alleged victim had marks and tape markings around her arms, and she told officers she had been restrained for between 30 and 45 minutes.
Football Cited as the Reason for the Restraint
Sources told Virginia Statewide Incidents, as relayed by the same station, that one reason behind Ward's alleged actions was so he could watch football upstairs without interruption. Ward now faces felony abduction and misdemeanor assault on a family member charges, according to wegotthiscovered.com. The case was first reported locally before being picked up by outlets including Dangerous Minds, which covered the arrest under its weird news section.
Under Virginia law, the terms abduction and kidnapping are treated as synonymous, and the statute notes that abduction of a minor is punishable as a Class 2 felony, according to the Code of Virginia. Ward is due back in court on Nov. 10, per the same WTVR report.
A Recurring, If Unusual, Pattern Around Televised Sports
Cases of fans going to extreme lengths around televised matches have surfaced elsewhere before. In 2014, a Russian Manchester United fan named Mikhail Sindeyev built a website where nearly 40,000 men signed their wives over to a so-called guardian for the length of a tournament, according to the Daily Wire. In 2010, a Beijing woman named Wang Xuemin responded to her husband's World Cup-viewing rules by founding a so-called soccer widows support group, the outlet also reported.
Research referenced separately includes a study titled Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior, listed among academic citations compiled by the National Institutes of Health's PMC database. The broader relationship between sports viewership and domestic violence rates in that body of research was not independently detailed beyond the citation itself.
