Criminal Investigation Begins as to How Rogers Got Cocaine

The Sacramento County Coroner’s Department on Monday confirmed that former UCLA football standout Don Rogers died last Friday from a cocaine overdose, which prompted police to launch a criminal investigation to determine how Rogers obtained the drugs that killed him.

Sacramento County toxicologist James Beede termed the 5.2 milligrams of cocaine per liter of blood found in Rogers as a “fatal level.” An autopsy was conducted Saturday.

At a press conference, Beede said he could not be certain when Rogers, 23 and a defensive back with the Cleveland Browns, took the cocaine. But he said “it’s likely” that Rogers took the cocaine “relatively soon” before he went into seizures last Friday around 10:30 a.m. and probably not at a bachelor party in his honor which ended about 3 a.m. Friday.

Rogers was scheduled to be married on Saturday. Rogers funeral is Thursday. It will be the second funeral for a young, talented and popular sports figure in less than two weeks. The first was for Len Bias, 22, a basketball All-American from the University of Maryland, whose June 19 death also has been blamed on cocaine.

Assistant Sacramento Police Chief Jerry V. Finney said the Rogers investigation “will receive a fairly high level of priority” but acknowledged that in similar cases in the past his department had only made arrests “on a few occasions.”

He said investigators would interview several dozen people who attended the bachelor party, plus Rogers’ friends and family in an attempt to pinpoint who provided the cocaine to Rogers.

Within an hour of the news conference, two police detectives arrived at the suburban Sacramento home Rogers had purchased for his mother and where he collapsed last Friday. They spent about 45 minutes inside the house, which was packed with grieving friends and relatives, but had no comment as they departed.

In response to the coroner’s findings, Ted Chappelle, security director for the Browns, issued a statement in the name of the Rogers’ family.

“We, the family of Don Rogers, are devastated and saddened by the death of our grandson, son, brother and nephew,” Chappelle said as he stood in front of the Rogers’ house.

“We are even more devastated by the coroner’s other findings as we cannot conceive or fathom this” because of “Donnie’s love for his family, the Browns’ organization and ‘all’ of the youth of America.”

Speaking for the Browns, Chappelle said he had “no idea” about Rogers’ involvement with drugs.

In Cleveland, Browns owner Art Modell said that Rogers was “probably the least likely prospect for such a development.” Modell has been seeking random and mandatory drug testing for National Football League players.

Dr. Joseph Pawlowski, the Sacramento County coroner’s forensic pathologist, said Rogers was “an outstanding physical specimen” with “nothing to indicate any pre-existing disease condition.”

Still, Pawlowski said, after Rogers was rushed to a Sacramento hospital physicians were “dealing with a person who was desperately ill in the last hours before his death.”

“Rogers’ heart failed when blood flooded his lungs and chest cavity, causing the heart to cease operating as a pump,” said Pawlowski, who on Saturday first suggested that Rogers died of a drug overdose.

Toxicologist Beede said the 5.2 milligrams of cocaine in Rogers blood was about average for other overdose cases. Coroner C.R. Simmons said the level was slightly below that reportedly found in the blood of basketball star Bias.

Simmons said the level found in Rogers “is consistent with the findings of the autopsy, which include congestion and edema of the vital organs.

“Assuming that the microscopic examination of tissue samples taken at the time of the autopsy are consistent with these preliminary findings, the cause of death will be due to cocaine poisoning and the mode of death will be accidental,” Simmons said.

Rogers’ mother, Loretha, 43, remained in serious condition at a Sacramento Hospital, after a heart attack she suffered on Saturday.