Hope Solo was arrested on Thursday in North Carolina, according to a police statement given to HollywoodLife by the Winston-Salem Police Department. Officers with the department cuffed the retired soccer star “in the parking lot of a business located at 3475 Parkway Village Circle in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.” Hope (aka Hope Amelia Stevens, 40) was charged with Impaired Driving (DWI), Resisting Arrest, and misdemeanor Child Abuse. The latter charge was due to Hope, who is married to former NFL tight end Jerramy Stevens, having her and Jerramy’s twins – 2-year-old Lozen and Vitto – in the car with her at the time of the alleged DWI.
“Ms. Stevens was processed and subsequently released from the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center. Based on the impending prosecution, no further information will be released regarding this arrest,” said the Winston-Salem Police Department’s statement. Hope subsequently tweeted out a message from her lawyer, Rich Nichols: “On the advice of counsel, Hope can’t speak about this situation, but she wants everyone to know that her kids are her life, that she was released immediately and is now at home with her family.”
Hope’s lawyer also added that “the story is more sympathetic than the initial charges suggest, and that she looks forward to her opportunity to defend these charges.”
Hope was arrested in 2014 over an alleged domestic violence incident against her sister and nephew. The former soccer star was booked in the South County Correctional Jail in her Washington state home, per the New York Post. The charges were later dropped in 2018 after the city of Kirkland determined that the incident was “unlikely to recur.”
The incident comes less than a month that Hope gained headlines when she and Carli Lloyd vented about the US Women’s National Team on her podcast, Hope Solo Speaks. “To be quite honest, I hated it,” said Carli, per USA Today. “It wasn’t fun going in. It was only for love of the game, really, for me. I wanted to win, and I wanted to help the team, but the culture within the team was the worst I’ve ever seen it.”
“When I got fired in 2016, every time I left for camp, my husband Jerramy hated to see me sad,” added Solo. “I didn’t want to go to the social aspect of camp. I wanted to train my ass off. I wanted to work my butt off. I wanted to play games. But I didn’t want to be around everybody and the culture of the team. It was really difficult. I don’t think people understand how difficult emotionally and mentally that is.”