CREVE COEUR, Mo. (AP) - Anheuser-Busch heir William Busch has been cited with assault after intervening in an altercation between his son and a fellow sixth-grader at a basketball practice in suburban St. Louis, according to police.
The 58-year-old Busch allegedly grabbed an 11-year-old student and pushed him into a wall in November at the gym at Chaminade College Preparatory School in Creve Coeur, police said in statement released Saturday. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that other adults separated Busch and the child after the incident. Police said the child told investigators he wasn’t injured.
Busch, the great-grandson of Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch, received a summons for fourth-degree assault, a municipal ordinance violation.
His attorney, Scott Rosenblum, said Busch intervened after school personnel failed to react when his son was “bullied - actually sucker-punched - by a much larger middle school student directly in front of him.”
The father of the other boy said Busch’s son was the initial aggressor and that school and basketball officials “acted swiftly and decisively in calming the situation,” including removing Busch and his son from the facility.
His son told police the scuffle began when the younger Busch pushed him two or three times, then raised his arm and a closed fist, according to a police report. After the boy slapped the younger Busch, the elder Busch approached him “from behind and began shouting profanities,” according to the report. The boy said Busch grabbed his shirt collar, pushing him backward, and a scuffle ensued.
A social worker contacted police after the incident, which was captured on the school’s security cameras and anonymously reported to the Missouri School Violence Hotline.
The elder Busch, who never worked for Anheuser-Busch, has had other scrapes with the law. In 1981, prosecutors declined to press charges after he allegedly bit off another man’s earlobe during a late-night brawl outside a tavern. Busch, then 22, told police the other man started the fight.
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com
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