Charges Dropped Against Lucky Whitehead

Talk about a series of unfortunate events for ex-Cowboys wide receiver Lucky Whitehead.

Less than 24 hours after being cut by the Cowboys for facing petit larceny charges in Virginia, Prince William County Police Department issued a statement saying they had the wrong guy.

Whitehead didn’t do it.

Police said the man who was arrested for the crime didn’t have any identification on him, but verbally cited the name, date of birth and social security number of Whitehead to officers.

The news surfaced Monday afternoon, day one of Dallas Cowboys Camp, and Whitehead told media he had no idea what was going on. His agent, David Rich, maintained from the beginning that the situation was a case of mistaken identity, and revealed Whitehead’s flight information that proved the 25-year-old wasn’t in Virginia at the time of the incident.

According to ESPN, Rich told the Cowboys that Whitehead wasn’t arrested. That he didn’t appear in court on July 6 as ordered because he never received the citation and summons. That it was all a mix-up.

Garrett says he just learned about Lucky Whitehead's arrest as he left walkthrough. Cowboys are "gathering info & will respond accordingly."

— David Helman (@HelmanDC) July 24, 2017

Whitehead was released just hours after Coach Jason Garrett addressed the situation in his Monday press conference.

The release came on the heels of the Boys catching heat for what seems to be a tolerance of misconduct in players, a la Ezekiel Elliott’s bar scuffle and pending domestic violence punishment/Damien Wilson’s assault charges, to name a few.

At the time, it seemed like a bold statement. A message of discipline for the team. But, after all of the facts fell into place, it read as a poorly handled decision made in haste.

“We got made an example of,” Rich said to ESPN reporters. “They needed to make an example of somebody to get those boys’ heads on straight. It is calculated. But I get it. It’s business.”

Executive vice president Stephen Jones disputes this notion, citing, instead, a pattern of behavior and an evaluation of ability to justify the move. Last season, Whitehead had just three catches for 48 yards and his own share of off-field issues.

Here is what Garrett had to say about the ordeal to ESPN:

In handling the situation and evaluating with the authorities there and in talking to him, we just didn’t feel like it’s in the best interest of the Cowboys to have him with us.

We’ve got a track record of being able to take guys that made some mistakes early on in their career and they get better. They grow and they develop and they become great citizens and great players. We have a number of those guys on our team right now.

We have other guys that they haven’t responded to that structure and that way of doing things and they’re no longer with our team. There are plenty of examples of that as well. In this particular case, we felt it was in the best interest of the Dallas Cowboys to move on from Lucky Whitehead.