Tyreek Hill found liable on two battery counts; jury awards estranged wife $500,000

A Miami civil jury found former Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill liable on two counts of battery and awarded his estranged wife $500,000 in compensatory damages.

The six-person jury returned the mixed verdict after roughly four hours of deliberation; the jury also found Hill not liable on eight other counts, and a judge dismissed an additional count earlier in the day.

Sources reporting the trial use the names Lakeeta Vaccaro, Keeta Vaccaro and Lakeeta Vaccaro Hill for the plaintiff; the jury’s award is described in the reporting as compensatory only, with no punitive damages granted. Vaccaro alleged during a weeklong trial that Hill committed multiple instances of physical and verbal abuse during their marriage.

In testimony cited by several outlets, Vaccaro said Hill tried to punch her in the stomach when she was pregnant in the summer of 2024; Defector Media’s reporting also cites alleged incidents in early January 2024 and on April 7, 2025.

Hill’s legal team sought to cast the verdict as limited; one attorney quoted in reporting called the outcome effectively a defense verdict and pointed to the size of the compensatory award to argue the jury rejected more serious allegations. When the verdict was read, Hill hugged his attorney Christi Bright, who told reporters Hill was glad to have told his side of the story.

Vaccaro’s lawyer, Paul Schwiep, argued during closing that her account was consistent and corroborated by contemporaneous evidence, and Schwiep said money cannot undo the harm but it is how the civil system operates. Reporting indicates the trial was part of the couple’s ongoing divorce proceedings.

Florida civil law’s heightened standard for intentional misconduct is noted in coverage; one outlet explained that the state requires "clear and convincing evidence" for intentional misconduct claims, a legal threshold separate from the jury’s finding of civil liability on two counts.

The NFL told Pro Football Talk it is monitoring developments and that the case remains under review under the league’s personal conduct policy, a point included in multiple reports. Outlets differ in emphasis: some focus on Vaccaro’s allegations and specific dates she gave, while others emphasize the verdict’s limitations and the jury’s acquittals on most counts.

Coverage uniformly records the compensatory award and the mixed nature of the verdict; reporting does not identify any punitive damages in the jury’s award. The articles do not document a criminal conviction or criminal charges arising from the civil trial’s verdict.

Taken together, the reporting establishes what the civil jury concluded, what claims Vaccaro made at trial, and that the NFL has said it is reviewing the matter under its personal conduct policy. The sources do not provide a court date for any appeal, nor do they report any criminal filings tied to the jury’s civil verdict.