ATLANTA — University of Georgia football players Justyn Rhett and Joenel Aguero were weaving through Athens traffic, police said, when they were pulled over the night of Feb. 16. As they sat parked side by side in their Dodge Chargers off West Broad Street, the officer who had stopped the pair approached Aguero’s car and began scolding him.
He had clocked them driving 19 mph over the speed limit. “There are families in those other vehicles,” the officer said, according to body camera footage acquired by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Toward the end of the stop, as the officer stood between the players’ cars, Aguero asked if the ticket was a super-speeder citation — a more serious speeding infraction under Georgia law.
“I know Coach Smart be tripping about that,” Aguero said of Georgia head coach Kirby Smart. Apparently unaware he had pulled over two Georgia football players until that moment, the officer’s demeanor shifted and he immediately brought up the January 2023 crash that had killed two members of the program. “January, last year, what happened? People died, right?” the officer said, later adding, “Let’s not be a statistic, because guess who is going to show up and work that? Me.
” The traffic stop is one of two dozen speeding incidents and arrests involving Georgia football players and staff since the January 2023 championship celebration that culminated in an early morning crash that killed UGA lineman Devin Willock and recruiting analy.