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Welsh soccer player arrested for tweeting anti-gay remarks at Tom Daley

South Wales police have arrested Port Talbot FC midfielder Daniel Thomas, 28, for posting anti-gay slurs on Twitter.

 

Jordan Valinsky

IRL

Posted on Aug 3, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 1:23 pm CDT

The Welsh soccer player who tweeted a homophobic remark at Olympic diver Tom Daley has been arrested.

Daniel Thomas, who plays for the Port Talbot Football Club in Wales, tweeted Tuesday a remark toward the British diving duo of Daley and Peter Waterfield. saying the pair can go “bum each other” following their failure to medal.

On Thursday, South Wales police issued a statement declaring they “arrested a 28-year-old man from the Port Talbot area in connection with offensive comments made on the social networking site Twitter.”

The police did not name the person arrested, but a team official confirmed with BBC News that it was Thomas. The midfielder was released on bail Wednesday.

“We’ve taken legal advice and, when the police inquiry is concluded, we will deal with it from then,” a team official said.

Thomas said he left his phone unattended and that the tweet was a prank. He apologized on his now-shuttered Twitter account, @10DanThomas10. The team has also apologized, saying it in no way condones Thomas’s actions.

Thomas is the second person confirmed arrested for harassing Daley on Twitter. A U.K. teenager was arrested July 30 for threatening to down the Olympic diver in a pool.

Photo via Hashgram

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*First Published: Aug 3, 2012, 1:16 pm CDT