This past Monday, a former star of the NBA was taken into custody at an airport in New York in the wake of allegations that he beat his young son so hard the boy ended up requiring hospital aid, as explained via a police statement.
Known for playing a total of eleven seasons across four different teams before announcing his retirement back in 2015, Ben Gordan found himself under arrest this past Monday at LaGuardia Airport in the wake of the horrid incident. Elijah, his 10-year-old son, was rushed to Long Island Jewish Hospital by his aunt, as reported by the New York Daily News.
As of writing, the condition of the hospitalized child is still unknown.
39-year-old Gordon was in line to board a plane slated for Chicago at roughly 8:45 p.m. when he was apprehended by Port Authority police due to the alleged abuse incident, stated The New York Post. To go along with the charges of child abuse for the incident, the ex-pro is expected to also be issued charges of resisting arrest.
Former Chicago Bulls shooting guard Ben Gordon arrested at LaGuardia Airport when he allegedly struck his child, sources say
The child, escorted by his aunt, was transported to Long Island Jewish Hospital to be treated.https://t.co/7W4i4n3rSt
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) October 11, 2022
Known to have earned well over $84 million throughout his career, Gordon was originally born in London but was raised just outside of New York City proper. He played ball back in college for the University of Connecticut before being grabbed by the Chicago Bulls as a third-round pick back in the 2004 NBA draft. The large 6ft 1-inch shooting guard was voted to the all-rookie team in his first season and sported a 15-point average in his games throughout his career.
He then went to play for the Detroit Pistons, Charlotte Bobcats, and Orlando Magic.
Gordon has been forced to deal with legal and subsequent mental problems since his retirement. Just over two years ago, he wrote about how he wanted to kill himself throughout the last season of his career.
“There was a point in time when I thought about killing myself every single day for about six weeks,” he expressed in an essay in 2020 for The Player’s Tribune. “This was right after my last year in the league, and I was living in a brownstone up in Harlem.”
“I had lost my career, my identity, and my family all pretty much simultaneously. I was manic-depressive. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping.”
Back in 2017, Gordon found himself under arrest for attempting to drive in New York while using a fake license and for robbing a manager of an LA apartment building at knifepoint
. Later that same year, he was forced to be subject to a psychiatric evaluation in the wake of becoming abusive with a woman in a store he was the owner of and locking himself in the restroom.
“It got so bad that they had me committed to a mental hospital, and the problem was that I didn’t even understand why it was happening,” expressed Gordon in a 2020 essay.