Franklin County prosecutors have dismissed charges against a baseball player who was
accused of raping a woman in a Downtown hotel while his team was in town for a
series with the Columbus Clippers.
“Victim does not wish to proceed; cannot prosecute the case without her,” the prosecution
wrote in a dismissal entry signed Wednesday by Common Pleas Judge David Young.
Elmer S. Reyes, 25, was indicted on two counts of rape and one count of kidnapping after the
woman said he restrained her and forced sexual intercourse on May 23, 2015, in a room at the Crowne
Plaza Hotel on Nationwide Boulevard.
The woman said she and a friend met Reyes, who was an infielder for the Gwinnett Braves,
after a game at Huntington Park. She told police that he paid for a hotel room for the women and
accompanied them there, then attacked her after her friend fell asleep.
Kort Gatterdam, Reyes’ attorney, said his client’s “contention all along was what happened
was consensual, and when it was supposed to stop, it stopped.”
Reyes, a native of Nicaragua, has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest and
continued to play baseball, mostly outside the United States, because he was suspended by Major
League Baseball and its affiliates while the case was pending, Gatterdam said. The Gwinett team is
the AAA affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.
