Bar owner testifies Christensen threw him
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BY LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star
Todd Mausbach saw a girl with wet hair crying hysterically in the back of the Brass Rail, a downtown bar he owns with his brother.
A group milled near her, pushing back and forth, he told the jury on the third day of Andy Christensen’s sexual assault trial.
Something was wrong, and he knew it.
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And Christensen, a Nebraska football player, was involved in whatever it was.
Why did Mausbach think so?
“Honestly, all those big guys in there are trouble,” he said. “Trouble seems to follow them, football players in general.”
What Mausbach didn’t know at the time was that the woman crying had confronted Christensen believing he’d reached under her skirt to penetrate her as she stood in another part of the bar.
By then, she told the jury a day earlier, Christensen had dumped two drinks on her head.
Mausbach said when he approached the group at about 12:15 a.m. March 8, Christensen stood there with a blank look on his face. Mausbach asked an employee who knew Christensen to walk him out.
The girl with wet hair pulled at Christensen’s arm as he walked away. She bawled and screamed, but Mausbach couldn’t tell what she was saying.
He stayed back to try to figure out what it was all about. But soon he saw his employee again. Christensen wouldn’t leave. They needed to call the police.
Mausbach said he’d handle it.
He saw Christensen pick up a chair, set it down hard against a wall and sit.
He walked over, said he was the owner and told him he needed to leave. Christensen sat blank-faced. Mausbach said he looked like he was intoxicated.
Mausbach told Christensen if he called the police, they’d arrest him.
What came next happened fast, Mausbach said.
“He took his hand up around my neck and threw me.”
Mausbach landed on his back. When he got up, he ran out the door to find police.
It took six minutes for police to get handcuffs on Christensen, and he kicked a dent in a police Tahoe.
Before the trial began Monday, Christensen pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for the scuffle with police. Mausbach said he told police he didn’t want charges pressed for what had happened to him.
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.
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