SAN ANTONIO – A star wide receiver for the University of Texas at San Antonio football program pleaded no contest to a DWI case, nearly a year after a 2022 vehicle crash near the UTSA campus.
Joshua Cephus, 22, made a court appearance on Thursday in County Court 1 and was given 15 months probation and must pay $870 in fines and court costs, Bexar County court records show. Cephus avoided jail time as part of the plea agreement.
The UTSA football program suspended Cephus from the team following the Dec. 9 wreck in the 7200 block of UTSA Boulevard and he missed the team’s bowl game before eventually returning to the program in January.
Cephus was then arrested in July for DWI with a blood alcohol level over .15.
San Antonio police investigators say during the crash Cephus was turning left and had a green light, but he lost control of the vehicle and rolled it over.
Cephus and his passenger, another UTSA football player, declined to be treated by paramedics at the scene.
Cephus, however, was not criminally charged for the crash until seven months later. His arrest came hours after a KSAT investigation revealed delays in the criminal case moving forward.
KSAT Investigates later discovered that Cephus was accused of repeatedly violating conditions of his pretrial release, according to court records.
He repeatedly had skipped tests on a portable breathalyzer device, according to the records filed with the court and, in a separate report submitted by pretrial services Sept. 11, Cephus was accused of not calibrating the breathalyzer device, records show.
The senior leads the Roadrunners in receptions, yards and receiving touchdowns and is among the leaders in all three of those categories for the American Athletic Conference.
Cephus last month broke the school record for receptions in a career.
UTSA (6-3, 5-0) is on a five-game winning streak and next faces Rice (3-3, 2-0) this Saturday in the Alamodome. The Roadrunners enter the weekend as part of a three-way tie for first place in the conference.