High school basketball player faces felony charges for alleged on-court assault

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This was not what anybody meant when using the phrase “elbows up.”

A high school athlete in West Virginia has been arrested after being accused of hitting a rival in the face with a stiff elbow during a basketball game.

According to court documents, Gage Ketterman, a student and basketball player at Harman High School, was arrested last Monday and is facing adult felony charges for breaking an opponent’s nose in the middle of a game.

West Virginia State Police were notified of the incident on Feb. 27 by the injured student’s mother, hours after the game between Union High School and Harman School.

The woman claimed her son was “elbowed in the face” by Ketterman and that the victim’s nose reportedly was bleeding “profusely” for “more than four hours.” The unidentified player had to be taken to a nearby hospital, according to court documents obtained by local ABC affiliate WBOY.

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Video footage which has been posted to Facebook and reviewed by the state police corroborated the mother’s claims.

Ketterman can be seen launching his elbow “directly in the face” of an opposing player, police said told the outlet.

In a post on the social media site by a user claiming to be the victim’s brother, Ketterman is seen in several videos throwing elbows at Union players. First, he appears to hit an opponent squarely in the face with an elbow and, in other clips, can be seen taking aim at the backs of the heads of several players.

Throughout the game, the clip also showed him allegedly taunting multiple players by striking them in the back of the head.

Authorities noted that in a video, Ketterman can be seen “wiping something off the elbow he had just used to strike (the Union player)” and concluded that the teenager’s actions seemed “intentional and criminally malicious in nature.”

Because Ketterman was 18 years old at the time of the incident, he will be charged as an adult. He was arrested last week after three warrants were put out, including one for malicious assault and two for attempted malicious assault.

He was released the same day after posting US$12,500 bond, according to the West Virginia Magistrate Court system, and his next scheduled court date is May 22.