King sacked and jailed for sexual assault
WIGAN chairman Dave Whelan last night vowed to sack Marlon King after the striker was jailed for 18 months for groping a woman and then breaking her nose.
The 29-year-old forward was found guilty of sexual assault and actual bodily harm relating to the incident in a London nightclub in December 2008.
King, who was on loan at Hull at the time of the attack, told the court that the 20-year-old student had wrongly identified him as her assailant.
But the jury at Southwark Crown Court unanimously convicted the former Barnet, Gillingham, Nottingham Forest and Watford player.
King, who was born in Dulwich and has 13 caps for Jamaica, was already out of favour at Wigan, who also loaned him out to Middlesbrough last season.
But Whelan insisted there would now be no way back for King, with the club seeking to terminate his contract at the earliest opportunity.
“He is absolutely sacked – we will not tolerate football players who get sent to jail for 18 months,” Whelan said. “As far as we are concerned, he is finished with football at Wigan Athletic.”
King has been to prison before – in 2002 he served five months of a two-year sentence for handling a stolen car before he was released on appeal.
The father-of-three was out celebrating scoring a goal for Hull and his wife falling pregnant on the night of the attack at the Soho Revue Bar.
King punched the woman in the face, breaking her nose, when she pushed him away after he had groped her, the jury heard.
His agent Tony Finnegan last night said King would appeal the judgment. Finnegan added: “No one saw this coming in light of the evidence. He’s very, very disappointed. I asked Marlon and he said ‘I’m not guilty, Tony – I didn’t do it.’”