Former Cal Poly football coach on trial for beer bottle assault

April 17, 2013

A former Cal Poly and Oakland Raiders assistant coach is standing trial for his role in a 2012 bar fight in Pismo Beach that left a man with a broken nose and concussion. [Tribune]

On August 4, then Cal Poly defensive backs coach Randy Hanson hit an Avila Beach man in the face with a beer bottle outside Harry’s Nightclub & Beach Bar in Pismo Beach. Hanson is charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and felony battery with serious bodily injury.

According to Deputy District Attorney Sandra Mitchell, Hanson, 45, hit 51-year-old James Kelsey with the beer bottle as Kelsey attempted to enter a limousine that Hanson was lying inside. Mitchell said that Hanson was intoxicated and lying in a fetal position inside a limousine outside Harry’s and would not move when Kelsey asked him to. Earlier in the night, Hanson invited Kelsey, along with Kelsey’s wife, stepson and a friend, to ride with him in a limousine from Avila Beach to Pismo Beach.

“The defendant got drunk, the defendant got mad and attacked,” Mitchell said during her opening statement. “The evidence will show that this crime was committed in a matter of seconds.”

But, Hanson’s attorney Ilan Funke-Bilu argues that a dispute over the Oakland Raiders initiated the beer bottle incident. Funke-Bilu said Tuesday that Raiders fans targeted Hanson prior to the former coach hitting Kelsey.

While Hanson was an assistant coach with the Raiders in 2009, he said Raiders head coach Tom Cable threw him from a chair in a heated argument, fracturing his jaw and ruining his relationship with the team. Hanson later sued Cable, but dropped the case.

Funke-Bilu did not make his opening statement Tuesday, but he told a judge, “The Oakland Raiders are going to be a major subject of this case.”

Cal Poly hired Hanson as a defensive backs coach in April 2012, and he resigned from the position 11 days after the arrest.