Slain Soccer Ref’s Family: Make Michigan 24th State To Toughen Penalties

The family of a Michigan soccer referee, John Bieniewicz, who died in 2014 after a player flew into a fit of rage over a call and sucker punched him, is asking state legislators to increase the penalties for an assault against a referee. The man who attacked the Westland married father of two, Bassel Saad, is serving eight to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

Saad was charged with a felony because Bieniewicz died. In less severe cases, an assailant convicted of misdemeanor simple assault would spend 93 days, at most, behind bars. Bieniewicz’s widow and son, Kristen and Kyle, testified before a Michigan Legislature hearing Tuesday in support of legislation that would increase the jail sentence for misdemeanor offenses to one year.

In the second of the two bills the state legislature is considering, an attack on a referee that causes an injury requiring medical attention would be a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. An attack causing a serious impairment could land the person in prison for up to five years

Similar legislation in 2015 failed to make it to the Senate and House floors. If it passes this year, Michigan would join 23 other states with increased penalties for attacks on referees, according to Wisconsin-based National Association of Sports Officials.

• SEE ALSO: Global Response to Lethal Attack on Soccer Ref: ‘Why?’

Hostility against referees, umpires and other sporting officials isn’t anything new, and the lethal punch Bieniewicz sustained was hardly isolated. In 2013, a 17-year-old Utah soccer player pleaded guilty to homicide by assault after he punched a referee in the face over a call that could have resulted in his ejection from the game. In 2015, two San Antonio high school football players intentionally tackled a referee, allegedly because he had missed calls and used racial slurs allegedly at the direction of their coach.

“When someone is overly passionate about their kid fighting their way around the rules of the game, it gets taken out on us,” Kyle Bieniewicz, who shares his late father’s passion for sports officiating, told the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee, according to an account of the testimony by the Detroit Free Press. “We screw up sometimes. We shouldn’t have to worry about the fear of being attacked when we screw up.”

John Bieniewicz, 44, died on July 1, 2014, two days after he was punched in what spectators described as a terrifying attack by Saad, who reportedly was upset that Bieniewicz was about to eject him from the game in Livonia’s Mies Park. The lethal attack provoked a global response and a renewal of calls for a zero-tolerance approach to violence on the field.

Bieniewicz’s survivors picked up that gauntlet this week in the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee, which sent the two bills — Senate Bill 200 and Senate Bill 201 — on to the full chamber for deliberation on a 3-1 vote.

“The big difference between what is in place and what is being proposed is one key word — ‘felony,’” Kristen Bieniewicz said. “That word alone is able to help deter people and make them think twice about what they’re doing and saying in the stands.

“Referees are out on an island; there’s nobody there to protect them. It’s not like they’re packing a gun. They’ve got a whistle. That’s it.”

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The lone dissenting vote came from Sen. Patrick Colbeck, a Republican from Canton.

“There is a coarsening in society. People are getting divided by race, religion, and now it will divide us based on occupation,” Colbeck said. “How does this bill, carving out special protection for certain citizens, comply with our Constitution?”

Sports psychologists offer various theories about the normalization of abuse and violence against sports officials, according to athleticbusiness.com, which cited “overzealous and overprotective parents, or athletes' and spectators' lack of respect for authority.”

“Whatever the reason, it's clear that there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents involving assault or harassment of sports officials,” the organization said.

The 2014 attack that killed Bieniewicz wasn’t the first time Saad unleashed his temper in an amateur sports contest. In 2005, he struck another soccer player twice in the face, five or six times in the back of the head and then, after putting down the child he was carrying, once “extremely hard” in the back of the head, causing the player to fall to the floor of an indoor soccer complex, according to a Canton Police Department report.

AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez