Tests Show Lindbergh Legally Drunk

Goaltender Pelle Lindbergh of the Philadelphia Flyers, brain dead and surviving only with the aid of a respirator, was legally drunk when his custom-built sports car rammed a school’s concrete steps, doctors said Monday.

Tests showed Lindbergh, who led the Flyers to the Stanley Cup finals last season, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.24%, more than twice the legal limit in New Jersey, said Dr. Edward Viner, the Flyers’ team physician.

One police officer estimated Lindbergh was traveling as fast as 80 m.p.h. when his car rammed the concrete steps of a Somerdale, N.J., public school, about 10 miles east of Philadelphia. Skid marks started only 25 feet from the point of impact.

Bobby Clarke, the Flyers’ general manager, said Lindbergh was not a drinker and “hardly ever drank.”

“Hopefully, something like this will change some of us,” Clarke said.

Lindbergh, 26, enjoyed driving fast and had his 1985 Porsche Turbo rebuilt in Germany to make it faster, friends said.

Lindbergh, the most effective goalie in the NHL last season with a 40-17-7 record and a 3.02 goals against average, was injected with a fluid to maintain his blood pressure and was put on a cardiac medication to keep his heart pumping.

“We are simply now going to work with the family to see how long they want to go on sustaining biological life,” said Dr. Louis Gallo, a surgeon at the Kennedy Memorial Hospital, Stratford Division.

Lindbergh’s passengers, Kathy McNeal, 22, of Ridley Park, Pa., and Edward Thomas Parvin, 28, of Mount Ephraim, N.J., were listed in stable condition at New Jersey hospitals with injuries suffered in the accident.