Police announced Wednesday they won’t press charges against Chris Henry’s fiancee, three weeks after the late Cincinnati Bengals receiver fell or jumped from the back of a pickup truck she was driving.
Henry, 26, was pronounced dead a day after the Dec. 16 incident.
Loleini Tonga, 25, was driving the Ford F-150 after Henry jumped into the bed of the truck during a domestic dispute at her parents’ home, police have said.
In a news release Wednesday, investigators said there was no evidence Tonga was driving recklessly or faster than the speed limit when Henry “came out” of the vehicle.
They estimated the truck was going between 19 and 23 mph on a curvy stretch of Oakdale Road in northern Charlotte. The speed limit there is 35 mph.
The Mecklenburg medical examiner ruled Henry’s death was accidental, police said. The official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head from a fall.
Police said Tonga had been cooperative throughout the investigation and they said her statement was consistent with witnesses’ accounts. But they said no witness actually saw how Henry came out of the truck.
Tonga and Henry’s agent didn’t return messages Wednesday.
This week, Tonga told ESPN that Henry jumped from the back of her truck and she wasn’t driving fast. She told the network she thinks Henry thought he would land safely and might have been scared because he saw someone calling the police. She said he didn’t jump with the intention of harming himself.
Henry was in Charlotte visiting Tonga, whose family lives here. The two, who have three children together, were planning their March wedding.
He was on injured reserve with a broken arm in a cast and had missed much of the NFL season.
