Hope Solo to stand trial for domestic violence charges: Report

Hope Solo will stand trial early in 2015 on misdemeanor assault charges following a brawl with two members of her family last summer.

The 33-year-old goalkeeper, who has won two Olympic gold medals with the USA women's national team, has pleaded not guilty to the domestic violence charges.

The trial is set to begin on January 20 with Kirkland Municipal Court Judge Michael Lambo setting Solo's next court hearing for January 6, according to the Seattle Times.

Solo is charged with two counts of fourth-degree domestic violence assault stemming from the June 21 altercation with her sister and 17-year-old nephew at a family gathering where alcohol was being served.

The nephew told police (via the Times) that Solo had been drinking and was angry because her husband, former NFL player Jerramy Stevens, refused to take her to the airport to catch a flight. 

 She reportedly told her nephew he was “too fat and overweight and crazy to ever be an athlete,” the documents allege.

The teenager called Solo a name, told her to get out of the house and then walked to another part of the house, documents say. Solo allegedly followed him and called him crazy.

Prosecutors allege that Solo attacked the teen, punched him in the face and tackled him after he retorted that both she and her father were crazy.

When the teen’s mother tried to intervene, Solo attacked her as well, the document says. The teen tried to pull Solo off his mother and then broke a wooden broom over her head, the document reported.

The 17-year-old then allegedly “got an old gun that did not work” and pointed it at her in an attempt to get her to stop assaulting him and his mother and to leave. The handgun was ultimately determined by police to be a broken BB gun.

Solo has claimed she was only acting in self-defense.

There was also an email from a Kirkland city prosecutor to Solo's attorney, Todd Maybrown, three and a half weeks ago, which offered a plea deal to Solo if she plead guilty to at least one count. It is not clear if Maybrown or Solo responded. It may be, because at this point, Solo's career and endorsement deals could be affected if she is found guilty of a crime.

In the interim, Solo will continue to play for the U.S. national soccer team as it prepares for next summer’s World Cup. Her presence on the national team has been met with some criticism after the NFL was grilled by the media for the league's lax handling of domestic violence by its players.