Police Close Rogers Case Without Finding Supplier

Police have completed their investigation into the death of UCLA and Cleveland Browns football player Don Rogers without finding the supplier of the cocaine that killed him, it was announced Friday.

Capt. Michael O’Kane said investigators interviewed people who were with Rogers at his bachelor party the night before he died and at his home the next morning on June 27.

“The investigation has not revealed any hard evidence which would lead to the identification of the individual or individuals who provided the cocaine to Mr. Rogers,” O’Kane said. “We also found no one who had witnessed Rogers using drugs.”

There was no corroboration from witnesses of a statement by Rogers’ mother to United Press International Thursday that her son’s friends had smoked marijuana at the party and that he had been deeply troubled for days, worrying aloud about his pending marriage to a college sweetheart.

She said he arrived home from his bachelor party, held at a nearby hotel, at perhaps 1 a.m.

“He decided to leave (the party) and come home; he told me the reason he came home was that there was some marijuana smoking at his party,” said Loretha Rogers, 43, who was released Wednesday from a 12-day hospital stay for a stress-related heart ailment.

“He had rented the room in his name. He said because the NFL is so strict on drugs, he didn’t want to be there if some security guards smelled it and busted into his room before they cleared it out.”

She said she cannot believe the Sacramento County coroner’s report that a cocaine overdose took the life of her son.

She said he awoke her the morning of his death, said he was going to take his 4-year-old son for a haircut and then disappeared into the bathroom. A short time later, she said, he called her, and she found him sitting on her bed.

“He was shaking,” she said, “just shaking. He said, ‘I want you to get me out of here. I want to go to the hospital.’ He started to go into convulsions.”

Loretha Rogers said paramedics arrived to aid her son, but it was 25 minutes before an ambulance came.