Former Bills punter Matt Araiza who was accused of gang rape cleared after evidence shows he wasn't present during incident: prosecutors

Unsealed documents in the Matt Araiza gang rape case show that prosecutors said the former Buffalo Bills punter was not present during the incident.

Araiza, along with 2 San Diego State teammates, were accused of gang rape at a house party in San Diego in a civil suit last year, costing Araiza a season in the NFL after he was cut by the Bills.



Prosecutors declined to press charges in December, stating that there was not enough evidence of proof for a conviction.

Yahoo Sports reported on Monday that a 200-page transcript of a meeting between deputy district attorney Trisha Amador and the accuser became available, and that Amador said Araiza couldn't have led her toward the alleged gang rape because he had already "left" the party an hour earlier.

“He wasn’t even at the party anymore,” Amador told the accuser. “All I know is that at that point, suspect Araiza is gone from the party.”

Araiza, who was nicknamed "the Punt God," was selected in the sixth round of the 2022 NFL Draft, but was subsequently released by the Bills after the allegations became public.

The civil suit had claimed that Araiza demanded the then-underage girl to perform oral sex on him, before taking her to another room where three men raped her for an hour and a half.

The accused was also told by prosecutors that video evidence could not disprove that the sexual act was consensual. “In looking at the videos on the sex tape, I absolutely cannot prove any forceable sexual assault based upon what happened,” Amador said.

“There’s nothing in the videos that sound like you’re saying stop or this hurts or anything like that,” District Attorney investigator Ted Mansour told the alleged victim.

The accuser's attorney, Dan Gilleon, told CBS 8 in San Diego that the witness whom prosecutors relied upon for Araiza's alibi was a "buddy" of the punter.