Justin Fashanu for "BBC Radio 1". Fashanu was the subject of an early internet meme in 1996 when the BBC opened their poll for the Sports Personality of the Year award to e-mail votes for the first time. An online campaign was organised among students in an attempt to enable him to win the title, but his votes were excluded from the final tally by the show's production team. In March 1998, a seventeen-year-old claimed to police that he had been sexually assaulted by Fashanu after a night of drinking. Homosexual acts were illegal in the US state of Maryland at the
Justin Fashanu time, and the youth stated the act was not consensual but being performed as he awoke. The assault was alleged to have taken place in Fashanu's apartment in Ellicott City, Maryland, United States. Fashanu was questioned about this by the police on 3 April, but he was not held in custody. The police later arrived at his flat with a warrant to arrest him on charges of second-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault, and second-degree assault, but Fashanu had already fled to England. On the morning of 3 May, he was found hanged in a deserted lock-up garage he had broken