charged McKenna with first-degree felony aggravated assault<\/a> \u2014 which in Pennsylvania is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines \u2014 as well as misdemeanor simple assault, summary harassment and summary disorderly conduct.<\/p>\nThe District\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office of Centre County, Pa., said Friday that it is withdrawing the felony assault charge against the 18-year-old Canadian, who is expected to be one of the top picks in this year\u2019s NHL draft, <\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to establish probable cause for the crime of Aggravated Assault, the Commonwealth must establish that a person acted with the intent to cause serious bodily injury or acted recklessly under circumstances showing an extreme indifference to the value of human life,\u201d the DA\u2019s office said in a news release. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth the District Attorney\u2019s Office and the State College Police Department have reviewed video evidence of this incident and do not believe that a charge of Aggravated Assault is supported by the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office added that \u201cprosecution will go forward with the misdemeanor Simple Assault and other summary charges as they relate to the serious injuries suffered by the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
The alleged incident took place around 8:45 p.m. Saturday near the Penn State campus, hours after McKenna had a goal and two assists during the Nittany Lions\u2019 5-4 overtime loss to Michigan State in an outdoor game played at Beaver Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe complaint alleges that the victim was punched twice on the right side of his face by the defendant following an exchange of words between the alleged victim\u2019s group and the group of people with Gavin McKenna,\u201d prosecutors wrote. \u201cThe complaint further alleges that the victim sustained fractures to both sides of his jaw which would require surgery and that he was missing a tooth.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollow-up by State College Police has confirmed that the victim suffered two fractures to one side of his jaw, as opposed to both sides of his jaw, and that he is not missing a tooth. The victim has had surgery and is recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn State hockey star Gavin McKenna will not face a felony assault charge after allegedly striking another man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[24278,11033,64,63,237559,237558,237555,14550,4895,39966,237553,237556,575,5570,237554,85,237557,37487,1547],"class_list":["post-463191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-assault","tag-attorney","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-centre-county","tag-criminal-complaint","tag-felony-assault-charge","tag-group","tag-incident","tag-jaw","tag-mckenna","tag-misdemeanor-assault-charge","tag-nhl","tag-office","tag-right-side","tag-sports","tag-state-college-police-department","tag-victim","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}