Details emerge in Ohio State WRs coach Zach Smith’s criminal trespassing charge

And now we know a little bit more of the rest of the story.

Wednesday afternoon, news broke that Ohio State wide receivers coach Zach Smith (pictured, right) had been cited -- not arrested, as originally reported -- May 12 on one count of criminal trespassing. In updating the original report, the Cleveland Plain Dealer provided details of the incident report associated with the situation that landed the Buckeyes assistant in Delaware (Ohio) Municipal Court Wednesday afternoon:

An incident report obtained by cleveland.com shows that Powell, Ohio police were dispatched to a home just after 8 p.m. on May 12 for a dispute. Smith’s ex-wife is listed as the victim on the report. The report states that there was no forced entry, the victim was not injured and that Smith was not suspected of using alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident. No other details were given.

Subsequent to that, Smith’s attorney explained to the Columbus Dispatch that the situation resulted from Smith attempting to drop his 13-year-old son off at his ex-wife’s residence when she called the police.

“They pick up and drop off like every other divorced family,” Koffel said. “They said, ‘He was told by one of our officers five months ago not to drop off at her apartment.’ I said that’s not enough to override a domestic-court order on where he’s allowed to drop off or pick up his kids. It’s a court order that controls this. ...

“He’s like, ‘You know what, I’m going to drop him off at your place. No harm, no foul.’

“She took exception to that and called the Powell Police Department. There were no threats. He never got out of his car. They weren’t even in an argument.”

In between the May citation and July court appearance, Smith had pleaded not guilty to the charge.

When reached by CFT not long after the reports surfaced, an OSU spokesperson declined to comment on the report. Urban Meyer is aware of the situation, and the football program is expected to issue a statement addressing the development at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Smith, the 34-year-old grandson of former OSU head coach Earle Bruce, has been on Meyer’s staff each of the six seasons since the head coach came to the Buckeyes in 2012, and will be (presumably) entering his seventh season with the program in 2018. He also worked under Meyer as a graduate assistant and quality control coach at Florida from 2005-09. Smith, a 2007 UF graduate, coached at Marshall (2010) and Temple (2011) before reuniting with Meyer in Columbus.