Bucs' Trueblood denies involvement in Indiana incident

Tampa Bay Buccaneers right tackle Jeremy Trueblood said Wednesday he was not involved in the incident that sparked a traffic stop that led to him being held for 13 hours in an Indiana jail Tuesday night.

"Oddly enough, I never stepped in a gas station, or out of my passenger seat till they made me,'' Trueblood said in a text message sent to The Tampa Tribune this afternoon.

Trueblood, who has started 61 consecutive games for the Bucs, was held in the Hancock County Jail after Greenfield, Ind., police said he and another man riding in a car driven by Trueblood's mother became belligerent during a traffic stop.

"They were locked up for failing to cooperate and for public intoxication,'' Maj. Derek Towle of the Greenfield Police Department said of Trueblood, 27, and Benjamin McKenny, 26.

Trueblood's agent, Tom Condon, said Trueblood was held in accordance with a 13-hour rule that Hancock County has for people who are suspected of being intoxicated.

"Jeremy didn't get arrested,'' Condon said. "He didn't get a ticket and he wasn't given a summons. They took him and another guy and held them for 13 hours, I guess because they thought they smelled alcohol.''

Hancock County prosecutor Dean Dobbins said Wednesday that the incident started when Jeremy Trueblood called his mother for a ride after he and two friends drank too much while golfing.

Towle said the situation escalated when his department received a call shortly after 10 p.m. from a gas station clerk complaining about two men who disrupted the business before leaving in a car driven by a third person.

"The gas station clerk called us and said two guys came into the store and were knocking stuff off the counters and almost knocked over a small lady with a child in her hand,'' Towle told The Tribune.

"The clerk said the driver (of the car the two men left in) didn't come in (to the store) and that he or she may be intoxicated, so we had an officer follow the car.''

Towle said police pulled the car over after it left the gas station because the driver was not wearing a seatbelt. Towle identified the driver as Wanda Trueblood, Jeremy Trueblood's mother.

Wanda Trueblood was not arrested, but Trueblood and Benjamin McKenny, who is a corrections officer in Hamilton County, Ind., were taken to the Hancock County Jail and held there overnight on suspicion of public intoxication.

Trueblood and McKenny were released around 10 a.m. Wednesday after Hancock County officials determined that both men were no longer intoxicated, the result of a test in which each showed a 0.00 blood-alcohol content.

Condon said Trueblood never left the car and was not one of the two men who allegedly disrupted business at the gas station. He and Towle both said the matter has been resolved and that nothing further will come of it.

"He doesn't have to go back there or face a judge or anything like that,'' Condon said. "I was told they have a 13-hour rule there, and they held them for 13 hours and let them go and that's it.''

Trueblood attended Cathedral High School in Indianapolis before playing for Boston College and being drafted in the second round by the Bucs in 2006. His 61 consecutive starts represents the longest such active streak for a Bucs lineman.

In May, Trueblood signed a one-year tender as a restricted free agent worth $1.759 million.