By Joe Johnson
A man recently received probation after pleading guilty to attacking a victim in Athens with a baseball bat over two years ago.
According to a Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed in Clarke County Superior Court on Nov. 23, six days before he was scheduled to go on trial, 25-year-old Omar Jesus Lopez of Danielsville pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges of battery and criminal trespass
He had been indicted for aggravated assault, aggravated battery and second-degree criminal damage to property, all felonies.
In accordance with the plea deal Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard sentenced Lopez to 24 months of probation, with the condition he have no contact with the victim, whose jaw was broken during the attack.
According to an Athens-Clarke County police report, the incident occurred on Oct. 30, 2020, when officers responded to a residence on Walton Creek Road where they met with the victim, a 30-year-old Gainesville man who said that he was riding with “an unknown individual” who stopped the car where he said his father lived.
The victim said that when he got out of the car, another unknown person came out of the woods and the driver struck him in the side of the face with a bat, according to the report.
The victim said when he ran the driver chased after and hit him again with the bat, according to the report, and when he fell the person who came out of the woods punched and kicked him, and a smartphone valued at $1,400 was taken from him and smashed on the ground by the attackers.
The victim was transported by ambulance to Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center.