In a now-deleted Instagram Live, Baltimore boxing champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis called the judge who presided over his 2020 hit-and-run case “crazy” from jail and stated that she “locked me up because basically I bought a property.”
Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy sentenced Davis, 28, who had been living in Parkland, Florida, to 90 days of home detention plus three years’ probation. He was driving a 2020 Lamborghini Urus when he ran a red light, crashed into a 2004 Toyota Solara and struck the fence of a 7-Eleven on Nov. 5, 2020, injuring four people — including a pregnant woman.
Last week, Handy revoked Davis’ home detention and ordered sheriff’s deputies to immediately take him into custody after learning that he had been staying without court permission at a Four Seasons Hotel and a $3.4 million high-rise penthouse that he recently bought in Silo Point.
Handy had ordered him to spend his house arrest in Baltimore. Davis’ longtime coach and trainer, Calvin Ford, volunteered his home.
“I just want to shed light on this situation, ‘cuz I feel as though she taking advantage of me,” Davis said on Sunday from the Baltimore Central Booking & Intake Center.
“She’s doing stuff that not right to me,” he added. “I don’t know if she’s a bad judge or not, but the things that she’s doing right now is not right.”
The Instagram Live was streamed from Davis’ account. Someone filmed an iPhone, which had him on speakerphone from jail.
At one point, more than 56,000 people were watching the livestream. The video has since been deleted.
Davis has a perfect 29-0 boxing record that includes 27 knockouts. He recently defeated Ryan Garcia with a body shot in the seventh round of a lightweight bout in Las Vegas.
In an email, Bradley Tanner, a spokesperson for the Maryland Judiciary, said judges cannot comment on pending litigation.
Ford declined to comment.
Michael Tomko, Davis’ attorney, could not be reached for comment.
During a hearing on Thursday, Tomko repeatedly told the judge to blame him.
Tomko said he and his client were caught off guard with the requirement to do the house arrest in Baltimore. Though his coach and trainer volunteered his home, it could not accommodate Davis’ 24/7 security team, Tomko said.
“I don’t think that Mr. Davis did anything wrong except listen to his lawyer,” Tomko said.
On Friday, Tomko filed a supplemental motion for sentence reconsideration in which he wrote that his client’s management team was looking for an apartment because of safety concerns.
“Case in point: within just hours after sentencing, multiple local and national media outlets had published that Mr. Davis would be staying at the trainer’s residence,” Tomko wrote. “The Court can contemplate the relative ease with which a harm doer could easily Google the name of the trainer and hone in on his address, unsuspectingly, even the very next night.”
Tomko said he wanted the judge to understand that the “life of a world-renowned athlete is rife with tremendous security concerns.” Housing a “person of notoriety” in “an environment where violence and drug dealing are second nature,” he said, is “simply dangerous.”
Handy, he noted, was on vacation for some time. The court had not yet issued a home detention order, Tomko said.
He said “no one was attempting to hide anything from the Court.”
Instead, Tomko described what happened as “an administrative error, purely based on notice.”
“Now I understand that this case is a bit different — part of the sentence was the sting of not necessarily enjoying creature comforts,” Tomko said. “But I assure you, Judge Handy, Mr. Davis never had any intention of violating the terms and conditions of his box, and again but for the notice issues, the lack of breaking the rule is apparent.”