Warren County High School football Coach David Daniels
SPARTA, Ga -- The GBI is conducting a criminal investigation into the beating of a high school football coach after a game last Friday. School officials said Warren County High School's football coach was trying to intervene between two fighting players when he was hit in the face with a helmet.
Warren County High School beat Hancock Central High School 21-2 at Hancock's homecoming. When the victorious visiting team went to the locker room, the door was locked. That's when Warren County School officials say a hoard of Hancock players and fans swarmed the visiting team and fights broke out. "It seemed like they were just waiting there," said Warren County School Superintendent Carole Jean Carey.
Carey said she watched as her teams coach stepped in between two players. "And so our coach said 'wait, stop, what are you doing,' and the player just swung around and smashed him right in the face," she said.
Warren County's Coach David Daniels was hit in the face with a football helmet and transported to a local hospital. Carey said Daniels suffered a severed a tear duct and he had surgery to repair crushed bones around his eye.
Six days after it happened, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was asked to conduct a criminal investigation into what happened to coach Daniels. The GBI's John Bankhead said the Hancock County Sheriff asked for help because of the wide scope of the investigation. "You've got possibly a hundred interviews to conduct regarding the players that were involved and others, and you've got two jurisdictions," Bankhead said.
Bankhead said agents from the GBI will conduct interviews in Hancock County and in Warren County.
Superintendent Carey told 11 Alive News that Warren County High School will not be playing Hancock Central in any other sport this year and possibly longer.
She said Coach Daniels was released from the hospital on Monday and he told her he would be at the teams' game Friday night and may do some coaching from the press box.