Former Cal football player charged with felony assault after Elmwood attacks
A UC Berkeley student who was dropped from the Cal football team has been charged with felony assault after a series of attacks on strangers.
www.berkeleyside.org
"Police say 22-year-old Aaron Maldonado shattered a car window with his bare hands, then punched two men and a woman last week, sending one of the men to the hospital.
Maldonado, who is from the Los Angeles area but had moved to Berkeley for school, began at Cal in 2018. But he struggled due to medical issues including injuries, according to news reports.
“He showed promise in his first two seasons with 13 tackles and 3.5 sacks. He was a 3-Star recruit for Cal in the 2018 class out of La Puente (Calif.) Bishop Amat High School,” 247 Sports reported in April. But Maldonado then missed all of the 2020 football season and nearly all of 2021 due to injury, according to the sports news outlet.
A witness to one of last week’s Elmwood attacks described the assailant to Berkeleyside as “gigantic, and out of his mind.” The witness told Berkeleyside that “people tried to intervene but he is really enormous.”
Despite Maldonado’s size, one bystander did succeed in pushing him off of a 65-year-old man he had knocked to the ground and was choking with both hands, according to court papers.
Police were called to the Elmwood neighborhood at about 1:20 p.m. June 6 after Maldonado shattered the window of a woman’s Prius then walked up to a 54-year-old mother and her two young children who were near Gordo Taqueria, at 2989 College Ave. (near Ashby Avenue), according to BPD.
According to court papers, Maldonado “yelled unintelligible words at her” then “hit her face and head causing her to fall on her knees.”
He then walked inside Gordo, saw a man who was in line to order food and punched him several times in the face, according to court papers.
