TIGER RAG NEWS SERVICES
Former LSU running back Trey Holly has avoided jail time by entering a no contest plea to felony weapons charges from 2024 and was sentenced only to a $1,000 fine and probation, his attorney Mike Small said Monday.
Holly, who left LSU after the 2024 season when he had been suspended, was Southern’s top rusher in 2025 with 798 yards in 10 games. He was accused of illegal use of a weapon and aggravated criminal damage to property related to a 2024 shooting that wounded two people in his hometown of Farmerville near the Louisiana-Arkansas line.
“I can assure you, we never accepted responsibility for that, because I’m convinced my client didn’t do it,” Small said. But he decided to not go for a complete acquittal to get a not guilty judgment on the charges dropped.
“Had he been convicted as charged, he would have faced an imprisonment sentence of not less than 10 and up to 20 years without benefit of parole or probation,” Small said.
Holly plans to remain at Southern and will be a redshirt junior in 2026. After satisfactory completion of his probation, he can file a motion to have the conviction tossed out and the prosecution dismissed.
“He can move under Louisiana law to set aside the no contest plea and move for guilty verdicts,” Small said.
Holly signed with LSU in December of 2022 as a three-star prospect and the No. 39 running back in the nation and No. 25 player in Louisiana from Class 3A Union Parish High in Farmerville. He remains the state’s all-time leading high school rusher with 10,532 yards in five seasons (eighth grade through 12th). He gained 110 yards on 11 carries in three games at LSU in 2023.
The original charges against Holly on Feb. 19, 2024, included second degree murder, illegal use of a gun, and a third felony charge of property damage at the Union Villa apartments in Farmerville, stemming from a Feb. 9 incident in which a woman and a man were injured by gunshot wounds.
In Louisiana, second degree murder happens “when the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm.”
Then-LSU coach Brian Kelly immediately suspended Holly.
If convicted of the original charges, it could have meant a life sentence. Holly was released after a brief stay in jail on bond that February.
“I have been falsely identified,” Holly said at the time of his arrest. “I am 100 percent innocent, and the people that know me know this is not my character at all. I was not involved in the incident at all.”
A Farmerville grand jury did not believe that, but it did reject the second-degree murder charge against the football star on April 5, 2024, and lessened the charge to felony illegal use of a gun.
Small wishes this case was resolved sooner. Holly was set to stand trial last summer, but because the air conditioning system went down at the courthouse in Farmerville, the trial date was delayed.
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