Five days after her brother was arrested in an Ohio shooting that left three people dead and two wounded, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is speaking out.
The Olympic gold medalist on Monday said on Twitter that she was having a difficult time processing last week’s news.
Her brother Tevin Biles-Thomas, 24, of Cleveland, was arrested Thursday at Fort Stewart in Georgia in a New Year’s Eve shooting at an Airbnb property, according to Ohio law officials.
He faces 15 charges, including two counts of murder, one count of voluntary manslaughter and one count of felonious assault for each of the people he is accused of killing, according to an indictment filed in Cuyahoga County Court. Biles-Thomas, who is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 13, also faces two additional counts of felonious assault for allegedly injuring two other victims.
“My heart aches for everyone involved, especially for the victims and their families,” the gymnast tweeted Monday.
Officials said on Dec. 31 that an “uninvited group” entered the rental house and “an altercation ensued” with the invited guests that led to gunfire. Delvante Johnson, 19, and Toshaun Banks, 21, were pronounced dead at the scene, and Devaughn Gibson, 23, was pronounced dead at a hospital.
“There is nothing that I can say that will heal anyone’s pain, but I do want to express my sincere condolences to everyone affected by this terrible tragedy,” she wrote.
Biles, 22, the most decorated American gymnast of all time, also asked for privacy as her family deals “with our pain.”
The athlete has been open about growing up in and out of foster care.
“My birth mother suffered from drug addiction, and when I was just 3 years old, my siblings and I were removed from her custody,” she wrote in an op-ed for CNN last year. “From there, we bounced around until I was 6 and my grandparents made the brave move to adopt us.”
Grandparents Nellie and Ron Biles adopted Simone and her younger sister, and Biles-Thomas and another sister were adopted by Ron Biles’ sister. Biles has said she considers Ron and Nellie to be her father and mother.
Biles-Thomas is on active duty with the Army, serving as a cannon crewmember assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, according to a spokesman for the base. He has served in the Army since 2014 and was deployed to Korea in 2018 as part of a rotation.