Criminal investigation into cheerleader injured by bottle at UA game

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Lupita Murillo - View Bio

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University of Arizona police want your help in a bottle throwing incident which sent a University of Oregon cheerleader to the hospital on Saturday.

The fans stormed the field near the end of Oregon's 44-to-41 double overtime victory over the University of Arizona.  Police say several bottles were thrown onto the field.  Oregon cheerleader KateLynn Johnson was hit in the head by a full bottle of water.  She was hospitalized overnight, treated for a concussion.

Today UA head football coach Mike Stoops even addressed the incident during his weekly news conference. "When you think about that, they can seriously hurt somebody, kill somebody, throwing something like that from the stands."  Video posted on YouTube shows fans throwing water bottles at the Oregon football players.  Johnson was standing on the southwest side of the stadium when a full bottle of water hit her on the head and knocked her down.

Brian Wang was at the game and read about the bottle throwing incident in today's Daily Wildcat. "It was out of character for us, we should have a lot more morals than that," he said. Enicy de Spain is a freshman and can't believe what happened.  He said, "I know it didn't come out of the students section which is even more disappointing because our older fans should be a lot more mature a lot more respectful of the other teams."

UA police is investigating and wants anyone witnessed the incident or if they have video to come forward. Sergeant Juan Alvarez said, "She was an innocent bystander in this whole incident, someone who was very selfish took it upon themselves to throw this item onto the field and caused injury to this young lady. That is unacceptable and we're not going to tolerate that."

Most of the students at the U of A feel the loss to Oregon is nothing compared to the embarrassment over the unsportsmanlike conduct. 

The University of Arizona issued this statement: "To KateLynn, the students, faculty, alumni and fans of the University of Oregon, we apologize for what occurred Saturday night at Arizona stadium, and we will take every step necessary to encourage good sportsmanship in the future by all who attend our events."

Anyone who may have witnessed the incident is asked to call U-A-P-D or 88-CRIME.