UCLA football player involved in Halloween elevator incident
UCLA defensive lineman Jay Toia was involved in a Halloween night elevator incident involving several college-aged people. UCLA is aware of the confrontation – which allegedly involved UCLA and USC students – and will investigate further. School officials released a brief statement Tuesday night.
“We are aware of the video and are following university protocols concerning student conduct,” said a UCLA spokesperson, via the Orange Country Register’s James H. Williams.
Video evidence of the elevator incident as released via social media. We have attached the clip, which states Toia swung at a 20-year old woman. There is no clear evidence of the swing within this video.
WARNING: The following video clip contains graphic language which may be disturbing to some viewers.
After several attempts to deescalate the situation, the videographer moves behind another person and stops recording. The aftermath of the confrontation remains unclear.
More about Jay Toia
Jay Toia, the player identified in the Halloween elevator incident, is a freshman at UCLA. He originally committed to cross-town rival USC, where he played spring football.
After transferring to UCLA over the summer, Toia made one appearance against Arizona. The 6-foot-3, 325-pound 19-year old has three career tackles, including two solo tackles.
Toia went to Grace Brethren High School in Inglewood, California after growing up in Tonga. He played rugby as a child, along with his brother Abitoni Toia, who stuck with the sport. His cousin is current USC defensive lineman Stanley Ta’ufo’ou and another brother, Soane Toia, is a defensive lineman at San Jose State. His older brother Siaki Ika was a defensive tackle at LSU from 2019-2020.
More Halloween drama
The girlfriend of Texas special teams coordinator and assistant head coach Jeff Banks has responded to a report that her monkey bit a child on Halloween night in Austin. In Banks’ first year with the Longhorns, a report surfaced Monday night that the monkey of his girlfriend, Dani Thomas, had an encounter with a trick-or-treater during Halloween festivities on Sunday.
Thomas responded to the report Monday night, taking to Twitter to answer a serious of questions and showed where the monkey, Gia, lives. An emotional support animal according to Thomas, Gia lives in a caged environment away from where children were allowed to trick-or-treat.
“This is sad that people have to go all out of the way to prove that a person is lying,” Thomas said in a video that has since been deleted, along with her entire Twitter account. “Here is the gate, here is where all the haunted house action happened. And yes, I do clean up fast — the shit’s gone. Here is the gate every child and parent was told to turn around at when they got to. It was closed and blocked off with balloons.”