The Shooting and Guilty Plea of Tony Ayala Jr.

At about 3:45 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2000, Tony Ayala Jr. entered a San Antonio house where two women and two children were staying, police said. The women confronted him with a handgun and called police. When Ayala made what police described as a threatening move, an 18-year-old woman shot him in the left shoulder.

Police said Ayala and the woman had met at his father’s gym. She was a family friend who lived at the house with another woman and that woman’s two children, according to the homeowner, John Hogan, who was not there that night. Ayala, 37, was taken to University Health Center and listed in stable condition. Police said he would be taken to jail after his release.

Deputy police chief Richard Gleinser said the woman probably would not be charged. “We feel she was right and justified in what she did,” he said. Ayala’s lawyer at the time, Alan Brown, said he was awaiting more details from police. “Tony was hurt and no one else was hurt in it,” Brown said. “These kind of cases turn on what your intent was.”

Intent and the route into the house were disputed. Prosecutors accused Ayala of entering through a window with the intent to rape. His defense argued that he had entered through an unlocked door and wanted only to talk to a woman he knew. The initial police account also said he entered through an unlocked back door.

Ayala had returned to boxing in 1999 after serving 16 years in prison for raping a neighbor in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1983. Before that conviction, he had been a leading junior middleweight contender, undefeated in 22 professional fights. Defense lawyer Mike McCrumb later said Ayala’s lawyers were concerned that the judge in the new case might allow evidence from the rape conviction.

The prosecution’s case was weakened during the trial, lead prosecutor Michael Bernard acknowledged. Under cross-examination, Sandra Gutierrez, one of the two women in the house, conceded several key discrepancies between her testimony and the statement she had given police.

On Sept. 17, 2001, Ayala pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted aggravated assault, abruptly ending the week-long trial. The more serious charge of burglary with intent to commit sexual assault was dropped. The agreement called for 90 days in jail and 10 years’ probation, with formal sentencing set for Oct. 8. Ayala had faced life in prison on the latest charges.

McCrumb said Ayala declined to speak publicly that day. “Because Tony risked life in prison, this was the appropriate decision,” he said. Bernard said both sides were unhappy with the deal but agreed it was the “right resolution.”