It didn’t take long, the actual act – the rape. A single song played, so it was about four minutes, give or take, was what she’d remember.
The victim had traveled to Virginia because a high school friend, Jahmal Edrine, a wideout on the UVA Football team, kept pressing her about how he was so busy “with work” – classes, strength and conditioning sessions, football practice – that he was still living out of boxes.
Edrine noted how he liked what he had seen of how she’d decorated her apartment in Florida, from photos he’d seen on her socials.
She finally agreed, to help out a friend – and that’s all they were, friends.
They’d never so much as hugged prior to her visit, which she understood to involve her helping with the apartment, and, she hoped, time to take an Uber for a quick solo getaway to Northern Virginia.
She thought the ground rules for her trip to Virginia were that she’d be staying at a hotel, but when she arrived, she found out that Edrine, who was footing the bill, hadn’t booked her a hotel room.
At this point, she didn’t suspect anything in terms of ulterior motive from her high school friend.
She worked on helping him set up the apartment, as had been the plan, and around his busy schedule, they even worked in a quick sightseeing trip to Monticello, so she never made it to Northern Virginia, but, no biggie.
When it was time for her to fly home, on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025, six days before the UVA Football season opener, Edrine told her that he’d called to cancel her flight, because he wanted her to stay another day.
He hadn’t, but him floating the idea – and the way he floated the idea – got her radar up.
This doesn’t feel right.
What happened next was a blur.
Four minutes
“I just walked in the room, she followed, and then we were just laying down, laying down in the room. And that’s when the part went, and she was like, I forced her on top of me, so, I didn’t. It wasn’t nothing like, again, it wasn’t nothing like, be on top of me now, like, nothing like that. Like, we was cuddling, was cuddling, cuddling, and then I directed her on top of me.”
That was Jahmal Edrine, talking with Donald Ricci, a detective with the Albemarle County Police Department, the night of Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025.
A press release from Edrine’s attorneys announcing that rape and abduction charges against Edrine stemming from this interaction had been dismissed – which is not accurate; the Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney office has since clarified that its move to drop the charges was a simple procedural matter, and that it intends to seek a fresh grand jury indictment in the case again in the near future – refers to the charges against the football player as “a true miscarriage of justice” and “false accusations,” and claimed that Edrine “told the truth from the first day,” telling police “the encounter was consensual because it was consensual.”
What Edrine said in his interview with police on Monday, Aug. 25, 2026, tells a different story.
Jahmal Edrine: “She tried to leave one time, because I was playing around, and I said I canceled, because I had bought the flight, I said I canceled the flight because I wanted her to stay another day. So, I was playing around saying I canceled. I never canceled it. And then she was getting, she was getting a little worked up, and, like, she’s like, ‘No, I’m gonna leave right now since you canceled it.’ And she said she was gonna go to the flight, go to the airport, and find her own flight. Like yeah, but then I told her …”
Donald Ricci, ACPD: “What else did you do aside from telling her it was a joke? Like, did you prevent her from leaving in any way, like, like, ‘Hey, don’t go.’”
Jahmal Edrine: “Yeah, probably. Yeah, yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
Donald Ricci, ACPD: “Tell me about that.”
Jahmal Edrine: “Just holding her, like, holding her jacket, but not, I guess that is wrong, but I was just playing around with her, and, like, in the moment, it was just play, it was, everything was playful banter, so, like, it wasn’t, it wasn’t nothing aggressive or egregious. So, like, no, ‘You can’t leave.’ It was more like, ‘Just listen to me, just …’”
The concession there from Edrine – “I guess that is wrong” – would factor in as investigators pieced together what happened over the next four minutes and decided that there was evidence supporting a possible abduction charge.
From what Edrine tried to pass off as “playing around” about not letting the victim leave leading to going to his bedroom and “cuddling,” and then the 6’3”, 220-pound football player directing the 5’1”, self-described “150 pounds dripping wet” victim to get “on top of me,” we get to the matter of the sexual encounter that followed.
Jahmal Edrine: “I did not rape her at all. I did not rape her. I did not. I was seeing the report, it said, like, I thrust my penis into her. Nothing like that. She took off, only, only piece of clothes that I took off, sir, was her jacket. I was asking her to take it off, and she was saying ‘no’ for a little bit, sir, but it was like not, ‘Oh, no,’ like, it was more of a playful banter, if that makes sense.”
She said “no,” but not “Oh, no,” and the “no” was “playful banter.”
More on the encounter from Edrine’s interview:
Jahmal Edrine: “When she said she was uncomfortable, sir, she never said, like, she was uncomfortable. When she said she was uncomfortable, so, she did say it was uncomfortable, like, the position we was in, not uh, like, you’re making me uncomfortable. Like, we were doing all this. She’s, like, when she got on top, she’s, like, this position is kind of uncomfortable, like, the position, the position was uncomfortable, and uh, and she, uh, I’m trying to think, the other position was uncomfortable. We just stayed there, like, yeah, we just stayed there. Like she, it wasn’t, like, she ended up just staying there.”
The first call to police
Edrine’s interview with police took place almost precisely 48 hours after the victim had first called the Albemarle County Emergency Communications from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport and told the dispatcher that she wanted to file a police report, saying, according to court documents:
“I went to visit one of my friends, and he sexually assaulted me.”
She had a layover in Charlotte, and finally, around midnight, was back home in Florida, where she immediately went to the hospital, before being referred to a government agency with 24-hour services for crime victims.
She was told that protocol was to first report the crime to local police, so, per the court filing, she called the Albemarle County ECC again at 1:56 a.m. – it was now Monday morning, Aug. 26, 2025, roughly eight hours into her ordeal – and described what had happened to her several hours prior.
“I’m about to get ready to go for my plane to leave. … It got to a point where he was holding me from leaving, he’s, like, holding my bag, he’s holding my hair, my jacket, to keep me from leaving. … He tells me to come inside the room, and I was like, no, so he walked me in there. And then, he (unintelligible] and put me on top of him. … I tell him, like, stop, or whatever, and he keeps going. And he just says he’s going to cum inside of me, and I tell him not to, and he did it, he did it. And then, I told him to get off, and then he said no, and I got louder and louder, and eventually he stopped.”
She’d have to repeat this story to another ACPD officer a few minutes later, and then again in an interview with local police in Florida, where she described the attack in more detail.
“I told him to stop multiple times. He’s putting himself inside of me. He just keeps going, over and over and over and over and over. … I tried to get up throughout, but he kept his hand on my stomach, stops, and I can’t get up, because my legs are here, and his are both outside of me, and I already hit my foot on the bed, so it’s, like, I know I’m not going to be able to just like take off, and the door’s already closed, and he’s, like, right there.
“I told him to get off me, and he told me I needed Plan B. I was angry when he told me he’d ejaculated inside of me. “l told you no, and not only did you do it regardless, but you went and came inside of me. He’s like, ‘My bad, I didn’t mean to,’ and he’s laughing.”
Armed with these accounts, Albemarle County Police executed a search warrant at Edrine’s apartment on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, which, according to court documents, led the football player to reach out to the victim begging her to recant.
Edrine, per one filing, sent the victim “hundreds of text messages that night,” and also “admitted to also repeatedly calling (the victim) to complain about the search warrant,” and “specifically asked (the victim) to ‘retract your statement plzzzz.’”
The victim, beaten down by the onslaught, eventually texted back, to this last request, among the “hundreds of text messages” that he sent that night, “okay,” prompting Edrine to text her a photograph of a card left with him by the ACPD, and asking her to report back to him that she had talked with police.
When she told Edrine that she’d called and didn’t get a response, Edrine continued to press, leading the victim, clearly distraught, to respond:
“they can’t do anything to you if i’m not here anymore… i can’t do all of this… it’s too much.”
‘It’s already bad for me’
This is what starts us on the sidebar to this story in which Edrine’s defense attorneys have claimed that the victim “later denied that she had been abducted and raped,” as they related in the press release that went out last week to sell the notion that Edrine had been exonerated.
This is, to say the least, not what happened.
To reset the timeline:
- The alleged abduction and rape occurred on Sunday, Aug. 24, as the victim was heading out the door to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport.
- The victim first reported to police, from CHO, that she’d been sexually assaulted on Sunday, Aug. 24.
- Albemarle County Police executed a search warrant at Edrine’s apartment on Monday, Aug. 25.
- Edrine was able to convince the victim, over the course of “hundreds of text messages,” to agree to talk with police to recant on Monday, Aug. 25.
- Edrine talked with police on Tuesday, Aug. 26.
- The victim, responding to pressure from Edrine, spoke again with Ricci on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025.
According to court documents, the victim “had two goals” for the Aug. 27 interview: “(1) She did not want to go through ‘the whole process and procedure’ of a trial and did not want Defendant to go to jail. (2) She wanted Det. Ricci to understand that everything she said about Defendant’s actions were true.”
In the Aug. 27 interview, the victim repeated a claim that she had made the day before in an interview with Ricci “that she was really upset about his ejaculating inside her after she told him not to.”
The notes from the interview have Ricci asking the victim what would have changed if Edrine had worn a condom.
“Her response was telling. Rather than saying that she would have had no complaints, (the victim) explained that if Defendant had stopped to put on a condom, there would have been no sexual activity because she would have had ‘the time’ and ‘the leeway’ to say no.
“Det. Ricci then asked what would have been different if Defendant had penetrated her without a condom but not ejaculated inside of her, and (the victim) replied (that) was not a possible scenario because (she) had never and would never have consented to unprotected sex.”
Ricci concluded the Aug. 27 interview by assuring the victim that, “based on her statements, he was not going to press any charges unless and until she wanted to do so, but that he was going to finish his investigation.”
She would call back the next day – Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025.
Per a court filing:
“She told him about the pressure Defendant had been putting on her to recant her accusations and how she could not decide how to handle it. ‘Either way it went, it would have been really bad for me. And it’s already bad for me.’ She expressed concern that Defendant would not leave her alone if she pursued charges.”
Who is the real victim here?
The press release from Edrine’s attorneys makes him out to be the victim.
“These false allegations threatened his livelihood, his education, his reputation, his relationships, and his future. He was forced to defend himself against extraordinarily serious charges while knowing that the encounter had been consensual and that evidence supporting his account existed. This is what makes this case so disturbing,” the attorneys, Rhonda Quagliana and Lawrence H. Woodward Jr., said in a joint statement.
Edrine is no longer on the football team, and per a statement from the University of Virginia on the day of his arrest, Feb. 5, he was “not currently enrolled at the University.”
His current status as of today vis-à-vis the University and UVA Athletics is unclear.
ICYMI
- Albemarle County: UVA Football player charged with rape, abduction
- UVA Football player charged with rape, abduction: Who knew what, when?
- Bond set for former UVA Football wideout Jahmal Edrine in rape, abduction case
- How does UVA Athletics handle a sexual assault accusation internally?
“Jahmal was telling the truth. Yet he was forced to endure the enormous personal and emotional toll of being prosecuted for crimes he did not commit. His life was upended, his name was publicly associated with horrific allegations, and his future was placed in jeopardy,” the attorneys said.
I’ve spoken at length with the victim, who wants the world to know that she’s “scared” of Edrine, particularly now that it can be assumed, based on the press release from his attorneys, that he thinks the rape and abduction charges are behind him.
The rape led to a pregnancy that she had to terminate – forcing her to go against her previous beliefs on abortion, which she opposed, but, as she told me:
“I didn’t want to carry my rapist’s baby.”
She’s speaking up now, she told me, because Edrine’s attorneys have used her silence to control the public narrative on what happened in those four minutes on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025.
“I explicitly asked my lawyer and the prosecutor not to make any statements directly because I wanted the jury to do their job,” she said.
The last 14 months have been anything but easy for her – in addition to dealing with the fallout of being victimized, then the abortion, she started a new job.
“He needs to be punished, for what he did to me, and so that he doesn’t get away with it, and goes out and victimizes someone else. That’s what I’m fighting for,” she said.
Share
Chris Graham
