Ben Gordon, a former NBA player, was detained on Monday at LaGuardia Airport in New York City after allegedly hitting his 10 year old son, sources tell the New York Post.
The 39-year-old former “Sixth Man of the Year” was waiting for a flight to Chicago when, according to the Post, Port Authority police allegedly prevented him from boarding the aircraft and then detained him around 8:45 p.m.
His aunt brought his son to the Long Island Jewish Children’s Hospital for evaluation; due to his young age, his son was not publicly identified.
The former shooting guard was processed and booked at the Port Authorities police station house. Before leaving the NBA in 2015, he had previously played for teams like the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons.
As of Tuesday, the specifics of his arrest and the state of his son were unknown, and charges against him are still pending.
Although it wasn’t immediately apparent how they were hurt, The Post, citing police sources, claimed that two Port Authorities officers suffered minor injuries during the arrest.
For Gordon, who has been arrested numerous times over the past few years, this is not his first run-in with the law.
In 2017, Ben Gordon was arrested for assault and robbery. That same year, he was also charged with driving with a forged license plate in Harlem. He was also charged with setting off fire alarms inside his Los Angeles home in another arrest, despite the fact that there was no fire, the Post reported.
A British-born American who holds dual-citizenship, Gordon went to Mount Vernon High School in Westchester County, just north of New York City, before starring at UConn and winning a national championship back in 2004.
Ben Gordon has been very candid over the years with his mental health issues.
In 2020, he opened up about his struggles in a chilling first-person account in The Players’ Tribune, writing that he even contemplated suicide at times.
“I would be up on the roof of my apartment building at four o’ clock in the morning, just pacing to the edge of the ledge, looking over — pacing back and forth, back and forth — just thinking, I’m really about to do it, B,” Ben Gordon wrote.
Ben Gordon went on to write that his panic attacks got so bad one night, that “all I could think about was escape.”
“I’m about to escape from all this s–t. I was obsessed with killing myself. It’s all I researched, all I thought about. One night my panic attacks got so bad that all I could think about was escape. … You become like an animal. It’s instinctive.”