Ex-Aztec Mao Receives Probation for Attack

Former San Diego State linebacker Tracey Mao was sentenced Monday to five years of probation and one year in a San Diego work furlough center for a March 3 attack on two men in the SDSU area.

Bob Grimes, Mao’s attorney, says Mao is allowed to leave the work furlough center to attend school and work. Mao, who is off the SDSU football team, still is enrolled as a physical education major.

“I think it’s a fair sentence,” Grimes said. “He’s always known he had to be punished for hitting the two young men. He just hoped that the punishment would allow him to continue his education.”

Mao, who started nine of SDSU’s 11 games last season, physically assaulted Brad Robinson in the Tau Kappa Epsilon house on the SDSU campus and Scott Pfennighausen in a taco shop across the street from the fraternity house in retaliation for a Feb. 21 brawl in which SDSU quarterback David Lowery suffered a broken jaw.

Pfennighausen suffered broken bones in his face and problems with his vision and sinuses. As part of the sentencing, Mao was ordered to pay restitution for Pfennighausen’s medical bills, which Grimes said will be “several thousand dollars.”

Mao, who has been in an Alcoholic’s Anonymous program, was also ordered to abstain from alcohol.