Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Craig Dickenson (left) and safety Loucheiz Purifoy on Nov. 30, 2021. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

By Lisa Schick/CJME News

Riders’ Purifoy spent night with police after West semifinal

Dec 1, 2021 | 10:18 AM

Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Craig Dickenson said the CFL team was embarrassed Tuesday after announcing that safety Loucheiz Purifoy was arrested, though not charged, on Sunday night.

“It shouldn’t have happened. I hold myself to a higher standard, but it just …,” Purifoy told reporters before pausing for a second. “I was hangry.”

Purifoy said he’d been out with a group at the restaurant, including some players and others. He said he got loud with a waitress and was talking to a manager about his food because it was taking 2 1/2 hours to come out.

He said some other disturbance happened behind him which he wasn’t a part of, and the police were called. He was detained, he said, for disturbing the peace, and was released without charges the next morning.

“The disturbance-disturbance part, I had nothing to do with. I was just in the middle of it because I’m talking to a manager and there’s people arguing and I’m just in the middle of it, so that’s how it looks,” said Purifoy.

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A video obtained by 980 CJME — from Earl’s on Sunday night — shows a man in a blue shirt shouting loudly at workers at the restaurant, but it’s unclear what he’s saying.

A woman comes up and can be heard saying “stop” then later in the video, what appears to be the same woman jumps up and hits something across the bar.

Regina police confirm a 31-year-old woman was arrested that night and charged with common assault. Purifoy said the woman was with his group and she’s a friend.

In a news release, police said that they were called about an assault in progress, that a man and woman were involved in a “disturbance” inside the restaurant and had just left. Police also said a 22-year-old woman who was an employee told them she’d been hit in the face by the woman.

Police didn’t name the man, but he and the woman were arrested. The release said the man was released once he was “calm and sober.”

Riders players had been nearly in quarantine for the first part of the season, and Purifoy said this was only his second time he had gone out to a restaurant.

“I should have stayed in the house, but I was hungry, man. I was hungry, I can’t help it,” said Purifoy.

Purifoy said he wants his teammates to know that this won’t happen again and that they still have a journey they’re on.

“I don’t want to be a distraction in a bad way at all; of course not. I don’t get in trouble. I don’t do this coming to the media to get in trouble, I’m here to play ball, I’m here to respect my team, I’m here to respect this community and that’s why I’m doing this,” said Purifoy.

Purifoy and Dickenson said they wanted to bring this up themselves because this is a small community and they wanted to get in front of it and then move on.

“The situation escalated and he should have just removed himself, and he knows that and that’s all. The police were called, I think, to de-escalate this situation that probably wasn’t …,” Dickenson paused for a second and Purifoy added in: “It shouldn’t have happened.”

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” continued Dickenson. “And they just want to de-escalate before it gets out of control. And he knows he should have left before then and I think he feels sorry for doing so.”

Dickenson said there will be internal discipline, but the team hadn’t figured out what that was going to be yet. He couldn’t say yet whether Purifoy would play in Sunday’s West Division final against the host Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

The importance of the game will and won’t weigh into the decision, said Dickenson, but he also said every game is important.

“He’s our teammate, he’s our family. We’re not going to make an example out of someone that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and should have left five minutes earlier than he did,” said Dickenson.