Colin Kaepernick is a victim of “his reputation” San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh is convinced, adding “there needs to be a resolution” to the ongoing sexual assault investigation that still publicly has his star quarterback at the center of a Miami police probe.
Investigators continue to weigh evidence retrieved thus far from an April 1 incident at a Miami hotel where a woman alleges she spent the evening drinking and smoking marijuana with Kaepernick, 49ers teammate Quinton Patton and Seattle Seahawks wideout Ricardo Lockette.
The woman further alleges she awoke to find herself in a hospital emergency room, but can’t remember much of what happened between her blacking out and awaking at the hospital.
Initially, police termed the incident as “suspicious,” but after more than three weeks of investigating have yet to charge anyone in connection with the case.
“There needs to be a resolution to some of this jump-the-gun, witch-hunt scenarios we’re seeing,” Harbaugh added. “I’ve seen one side reported. I’ve heard the other side and feel very good there’ll be a good resolution, and hopefully a just one, too. I hate to see his reputation be the victim. Winston Churchill had a great quote: ‘A lie will get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put on its pants.”
Since the news became public, the 26-year-old Kaepernick has maintained his innocence, at one point taking to Twitter to post “I take great pride in who I am and what I do, but I guess sometimes you have to deal with someone who makes things up.”
Apparently unaffected by it all, Niners’ GM Trent Baalke told reporters the team has every intention of continuing to negotiate with a deal with Kaepernick the two sides were seeking to strike long before news of the police investigation became public.
“Nothing’s changed, but negotiations of these kind are long,” he said. “They can be drawn-out, they can be very tedious. Like all, it takes a lot of work to get these deals done, and a lot of thought and engineering that goes into it.”
