49ers Release Reuben Foster Following Recent Domestic Violence Report, Arrest

The San Francisco 49ers have released linebacker Reuben Foster after he was arrested late Saturday night on charges of misdemeanor domestic violence.

The incident occurred at the team hotel Saturday, ahead of the 49ers’ Sunday game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. According to ESPN, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office said the arrest occurred at 9.10 p.m. EST at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Tampa.

Foster was booked into jail two hours after the arrest, but was released after he paid the $2,000 bail that was set after the hearing on Sunday. It was not Foster’s first altercation with the law as he was arrested earlier in the year, in February, for felony domestic violence, but the charges were dropped in May.

49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch stood by the linebacker during the first incident, but made it clear they would not tolerate any such issues in the future.

"We can promise if there's someone who ever hits their significant other, girlfriends, some person like that, that person is not going to be on our team,” Shanahan said after the first arrest, according to the BBC.

"Obviously, Reuben is on our team right now, so we're waiting to see how that goes. But if that's something that we felt he did or ended up happening, you guys will see how we feel."

Foster has played 16 games for the Niners, but failed to impress this season as he made 29 tackles without any interceptions or fumble recoveries. The 49ers hierarchy stood their ground after his latest arrest and confirmed they were parting ways with the linebacker Sunday.

"We have a set of standards in place that the players were involved with in developing," Lynch said. "In this case, it was communicated exceptionally clear and to the point as to what we expected out of him, and unfortunately what transpired yesterday, this isn't a comment on what happened there because that would be mere speculation on our part.”

“It's more of a comment on him not living up to what we had communicated and to the energy and the time that we've invested in him,” he added. "That doesn't mean we don't love him -- we all do, we care for him -- but we feel like it's in the best interest of our organization to move on at this point, and that's a very tough decision."

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office confirmed that the victim pressing charges against Foster was Elissa Ennis, who has been in an on-again-off-again relationship with the linebacker. She was also the person who filed domestic violence charges against Foster in February.

Apart from the incident on Saturday night, there was said to be another domestic violence complaint Oct. 12. The 49ers were said to be unaware of that incident between Foster and Ennis, according to SF Chronicle’s Evan Sernoffsky. The neighbors were said to have called the police after they heard a verbal altercation between the two owing to “material found on the linebacker’s cell phone.”