Witness In Patrick Kane Investigation To Appear Before Grand Jury

By Kate Shepherd in News on Sep 4, 2015 4:12PM

Patrick Kane celebrates after scoring a goal in June 15, 2015. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

There's finally a development in the ongoing Patrick Kane sexual assault investigation. A witness who was with Kane's alleged victim on the night in question has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Sept. 8, Buffalo's NBC affiliate WGRZ reported.

Grand juries typically investigate potential criminal conduct and then decide whether or not to charge the defendant.

Blackhawks training camp starts on Sept. 17 but former Erie County (New York) District Attorney Frank Clark doesn't expect an outcome by the end of the month, he told WGRZ. The grand jury process could take weeks or months, and there's no way to know when it started.

"Right now, it looks as though the decider as to whether or not Patrick Kane is guilty of any criminal conduct or not will be an Erie County grand jury," Clark told the station. "They may have been listening to the case for a while, and we're just finding out about it. Or it could be that both the police and the prosecutor felt that they had some investigative work to do before they were comfortable in starting a grand jury action."

It's possible that Kane could be called to appear before the grand jury.

"This is all now up to the prosecutor as to how much he wants to put before the grand jury, and how long he wants to take before he asks the grand jury to make a judgment," Clark said.

There's been no official word from Blackhawks about Kane's future with the team. Team captain Jonathan Toews remained extremely professional when asked about the investigation on a Winnipeg radio station Thursday.

"I think you've just got to have confidence that things like that will resolve themselves over time," he said. "And for the time being, you stay together as a team, you support your teammate, teammates that are maybe going through a rough patch."

"We don't let anything going on on the outside affect the way we do our job and the way we come to work together as a team," he said.