Mark Sanchez and family
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Mark Sanchez and family
With former New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez now facing both a felony charge and a civil lawsuit over a an incident early Saturday in Indianapolis that resulted in his being stabbed, the 2009 No. 5 overall NFL draft pick has called his final game for Fox Sports, where he has served as an in-game football analyst since 2021. That, anyway, is the claim by an unnamed Fox insider who spoke to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper on Monday.
While Sanchez, a 38-year-old married father of three who played for the Jets from 2009 through 2012 and finally retired from the NFL in 2018, was hit with a felony charge of battery resulting in serious bodily injury on top of three misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident, he now also faces a lawsuit filed Monday by the man Sanchez allegedly attacked — identified in multiple media reports as 69-year-old Perry Tole of Indianapolis, who was working as the driver of a truck collecting used cooking oil from restaurants at the time of the incident.
Tole’s suit seeks unspecified damages from Sanchez as well as from Sanchez’s employer, Fox, who assigned him to cover the Indianapolis Colts vs. Las Vegas Raiders game on Sunday.
Lawsuit Blamed Fox For Hiring Sanchez
The lawsuit alleges that Fox employed Sanchez and sent him unsupervised to Indianapolis even though the network “knew or should have known” that Sanchez posed a risk due to what the lawsuit claims to the ex-quarterback’s “propensity for drinking and/or harmful conduct,” according to a Daily Mail report citing the legal filing.
An unnamed source told the Mail that as a result of the violent incident, Sanchez’s days as a Fox commentator are effectively over.
“He’s already been told that he won’t be on camera again, and we’ve made the moves to replace him. As long as there are serious charges pending we really just can’t have him on screen,” the Fox insider told the paper. “He has not yet been officially fired, because that takes some legalities, but that’s where this is going.”
The insider told the paper that Sanchez’s alleged actions would violate a “morals clause” in his Fox contract, and predicted that within “the next couple days” Sanchez and the network will announce that they have “decided to part ways.”
Brother of Sanchez Issues First Statement
Though Sanchez has not spoken publicly since the incident and as of Monday morning reportedly remained in an Indianapolis hospital, his brother Nick Sanchez issued a statement to WXIN TV news reporter Angela Ganote, one made on behalf of the Sanchez family.
“This has been a deeply distressing time for everyone involved. Mark and our family are incredibly grateful for the concern, love, and support we’ve received over the past few days,” Nick Sanchez said in the statement quoted by Ganote. “Mark remains under medical care for the serious injuries he sustained and is focused on his recovery as the legal process continues. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the first responders and medical staff.”
In the lawsuit, Tole says that he was “permanently disfigured” by Sanchez in the altercation, and endured “significant injuries to his head, jaw and neck” when the former NFL player body-slammed the older man to the ground.
Tole was using a knife to defend himself from Sanchez, and it was that knife which injured him when Sanchez attacked him, the lawsuit claims.