Former Wisconsin Badgers and Green Bay Packers players are being charged in Marathon County again.
In January, a former player for the Green Bay Packers was charged with disorderly conduct and driving while intoxicated for the second time. Now, Marathon County is charging the same man with two felonies.
Wausau resident William J. Ferrario, 44, is being charged with two counts of misdemeanour bond jumping, intimidation of a victim, and stalking. When the District Attorney’s Office filed the charges on Tuesday, Marathon County Circuit Judge Michael Moran approved an arrest warrant for Ferrario.
Ferrario played guard for the Wisconsin Badgers during their back-to-back Rose Bowl victories in 1999 and 2000. In 2001, he was selected in the fourth round by the Green Bay Packers. He spent the whole 2002 season as a player with the Packers. In 2003, the Packers let him go.
The initial criminal complaint said that Ferrario purposefully bumped into someone on January 2 and would not allow them to pass, causing a commotion in his Wausau home. Ferrario was taken to a motel that night by the responding police, but he came back the following day. Ferrario became enraged and made a commotion in the garage after discovering the house’s doors were locked and realising he couldn’t enter.
Ferrario was detained by the police and sent to the Marathon County Jail. On January 4, he pleaded not guilty to accusations of disorderly conduct and driving while intoxicated for the second time. Judge LaMont Jacobson of the Marathon County Circuit Court granted Ferrario $1,500 in signature bail, subject to the requirement that he maintain no contact with the victims named in the case.
The victim in the first instance called an officer on February 27 and stated that Ferrario had been attempting to get in touch with her for the last two weeks, according to the criminal complaint in the second case. According to the lawsuit, she disabled his phone number, but he continued to call her while hiding it.
The woman said that she mistook a call for one from Ferrario and answered it. According to court documents, she claimed he informed her he was sick of not being able to speak with her and the other victims included in the initial complaint. According to the lawsuit, he informed her that she would have cause to contact the police after seeing “a boot through the door.”
According to the lawsuit, Ferrario also made contact with the victims via Facebook and asked a neighbour to send a message on his behalf. The neighbour said that the judge’s no-contact order prevented him from delivering Ferrario’s message.
Ferrario was believed to be residing at a house in Eau Claire, so a Wausau police officer called the Eau Claire police department and asked them to search for him there. When someone opened the door at the house, a girl stated that her parents were out of town and that she was alone. According to the complaint, an officer noticed Ferrario’s car in the driveway and an unidentified shadow in the window.
