Arrests made in football game brawl

Player stomped in eye with football cleat

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A Sanford man is in danger of losing his sight after being attacked by players on his own football team. Two players and one of the wives were arrested for battery Thursday.

The brawl happened after a game Saturday at Derbyshire Park near Nova Road and Mason Avenue. The players are on an adult amateur football team, the Seminole Mambas. The starting wide receiver, Avery Harris, quarterback, Michael Hewett, and his wife, Kandice Hewett were arrested.

Michael Hewett is accused of stomping teammate Eugene Butler in the eye with his spiked football cleat.

The team's coach, Chris Herring, told WKMG in his 30 years of football he had never seen a team implode. Herring called it terrible sportsmanship that put three people behind bars and another trying to regain his eyesight.

"His eye is like all split and everything, he's unconscious, and like blood is everywhere. He got hit in the eye with a cleat," a witness told a 911 dispatcher.

Butler now wears sunglasses because the light bothers him. He also has stitches and a fractured nose.

"I remember feeling the hit, just don't know where," said Butler.

The Seminole Mambas had just finished a game. They lost and some of the players began arguing on the field, turning on one another. Butler was then beaten unconscious.

"I've never seen anything like that, especially with a team and their own player," said Herring.

Avery Harris, Kandice Hewett, Michael Hewett

"There's 40 to 50 people in pretty much like a mosh pit type of thing. And you have linemen who are 300 pounds, they're holding people back, pushing back. From what I was told, someone backed up into him and stepped on him," said Michael Hewett after posting bond Thursday.

A Daytona Beach arrest report said the coach saw Hewett stomp on Butler with his spiked cleat. Kandice Hewett said she was trying to get people off of her husband.

"If people were to look at this and say these are grown folks fighting like they're still in high school, what do you say to those people?" asked WKMG's Sheli Muniz'.

"It's ridiculous, it should've never happened," said the Hewetts.

"Our motto was, 'We are a team, we are a family when we are on that field'," said Butler.

Butler said he wanted everyone involved to be held accountable. Those arrested have since been kicked off the team and bonded out of jail.