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Prosecutors in the assault case of Boston Bruins veteran Milan Lucic dropped charges against him on Friday after filing a motion to use the 911 call made the night of the alleged assault.
In court Friday, Deputy Prosecutor Samuel Jones called the 911 operator as a witness. Lucic was inside the courtroom, but his wife refused to testify, invoking her spousal privilege.
The Bruins player faced assault charges after an altercation with his wife on Nov. 18, 2023. It was revealed in court on Friday that the call was made once Lucic’s wife was in the lobby of their building.
Police said the woman who called said “her husband” tried to strangle her after claiming he couldn’t find her phone.
Lucic allegedly grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back saying, “She wasn’t going anywhere.” Officers responding to the scene said Lucic appeared to be intoxicated.
Lucic’s defense argued that the 911 call should be inadmissible because they said she had time to make up her statement to the 911 operator in the time it took her to go downstairs and make the call.
The defense also said his wife told police that the red marks found on her chest were not from Lucic trying to strangle her.
“At this time, the Commonwealth cannot prove the charges against the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt without the victim’s participation,” the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office wrote in a statement Friday after the trial. “The victim in this matter is out of state and she made it clear that she intends to assert a valid privilege not to testify at trial.”
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said that “this situation is something that prosecutors encounter quite frequently in matters involving internal charges.”
“We handled this case exactly as we would any other presenting a similar set of circumstances,” James Borghesani, chief communications officer for the district attorney’s office, wrote in a statement Friday.
The hockey forward was arrested last fall for assault and battery on an intimate partner after an incident at his Boston apartment and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment several days later.
Lucic has been in a indefinite leave from that point on and entered the NHL’s player assistance program.
At a pretrial hearing on Jan. 19, Lucic’s attorney requested a bench trial, waiving his client’s right to a jury trial.
According to a police report provided to NBC10 Boston by sources, officers responded to Lucic’s residence on Nov. 18 after a woman called 911 and said her husband had tried to strangle her.
Police said the woman later identified her husband as Lucic.
According to the police report, Lucic was angry over a cell phone and at one point, he allegedly grabbed his wife’s hair and pulled her back, telling her he wasn’t going anywhere.
Lucic’s wife told police that during the night, her husband was unable to locate his phone after returning to the apartment from a night of partying. She said he began yelling at her, demanding that she give him back her phone, believing she had hidden it. She told him that she didn’t have her phone number and that she didn’t know where she was. That’s when the attack occurred.
When police asked her if Lucic had strangled her, she allegedly said no.
Officers said Lucic appeared intoxicated and told them “nothing had happened” but refused to explain further. He then he was arrested.
Police said they saw a broken lamp on one of the nightstands inside the apartment and what appeared to be a small amount of broken glass on the floor.
Lucic is a veteran of more than 1,300 NHL games with the Bruins, Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. He won the Stanley Cup with Boston in 2011 and is back with the team after signing a one-year free agent contract last summer worth $1 million with $500,000 in potential additional incentives.