Montreal Impact’s Mignane Diouf Update

On Thursday, IMS obtained a copy of  Montreal Impact’s Mignane Diouf’s arrest report from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Department. I also talked with Patrick Hogan, a spokesperson for the airport. IMS was able to glean a few more bits of information from those two sources concerning the incident on Sunday where Diouf was arrested inside the airport for shoplifting.

According to Hogan, Diouf was indeed charged with a gross misdemeanor for theft which was filed with the the Hennepin County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday morning. A clerk with Hennepin County Courts told IMS the case will now be reviewed by the DA and a determination will be made whether to charge the Senegalese player and if so what exactly they will charge him with.

According to Minnesota statutes, a gross misdemeanor means any crime which is not a felony or misdemeanor. The maximum fine which may be imposed for a gross misdemeanor is $3,000.

The report gives us a bit more insight into the incident itself. It states that a group of Impact players entered the In Motion Pictures store where one of the players purchased a pair of headphones. A short while later the manager of the store noticed a $599.99 pair of Dr. Dre “Beats” missing off the display where the Impact players had been. The manger reviewed the surveillance video and then called police who did the same. The police report says the video showed one of the Impact players removing the headphones and then putting them in his bag without paying for them.

The police went to Gate C-16 where three Impact players were sitting. Then the police gathered all the players together at Gate C-21 telling them they needed to take care of “some unfinished business.”  The In Motion Pictures store manager who was with the police pointed out three Montreal Impact players who had been in the store. As one of the officers approached those three players Diouf tried to walk away. The officer told Diouf to return to the group by motioning to him. The report stated, ‘At that time Diouf stated, “I will pay for them. I will pay for them.”‘

It is pointed out in the statement with a special note that “This was a spontaneous utterance from Diouf.”

The report goes on to explain that Diouf was taken back to the store, where he took the headphones out of his bag, placed them on the counter and stated again he “would pay for them.” One of the officers suggested to the store manager that he could let him try to pay or press charges. The Senegalese player’s credit card was rejected at the counter so he went with police to an ATM machine with the same results. In the mean time the manager of the store had called his corporate manager who told him to press charges.

The police cuffed Diouf and brought him to an interrogation room but he was not able to understand English so they transported him to the Hennepin County Detention Center. Diouf was detained overnight there and released on Monday morning after his bail of $6000.00 was posted.