Ex-Football Star a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ : Brother: Cocaine Led to Fatal Fight

Reginald Fredrick Traylor, arrested in the shooting death earlier this week of his brother, said Thursday that he “didn’t intend to kill him.” He said that the former San Jose State University football star was irrational after a three-day cocaine binge and that he fired only to protect himself.

“Us being close is an understatement,” Traylor said softly in an interview at the Santa Ana house he had shared with his brother. “I loved my brother very much.”

Only hours after his release Thursday from the Orange County Jail, where he had been held on suspicion of murder, Traylor, 27, spoke proudly of his brother, Rodney Dwight Traylor, 26, who died Tuesday morning at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital of a gunshot wound to the groin.

The district attorney’s office has not yet decided whether to file criminal charges in the death, and without a formal charge authorities were bound by law to release Traylor after 48 hours in jail.

With his wife, six young children and attorney around him, Traylor spoke painfully of how he came to shoot his brother in their yard Monday morning.

Rodney had been selling cocaine in recent months, he said, and in the four to six weeks preceding the shooting, the sales had “rapidly accelerated.” He was buying an ounce every 10 to 20 days for “personal consumption and sales,” Traylor said.

Rodney had begun selling cocaine to help pay household bills when his brother went on disability and welfare following a December, 1985, construction accident, his brother said.

It was when he started to snort and smoke cocaine that he changed, Traylor said, into a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“When he started to get his personality change, I knew what it was,” Traylor said.

Traylor’s attorney, Milton C. Grimes, said he, too, had seen the change: “In the last couple months, (Rodney’s) personality changed from a loving uncle to the children and pseudo family man . . . to a person who didn’t respect Reggie’s family.” He said Rodney “abused and mistreated the children at home.”

Rodney’s sister-in-law, Janice Traylor, 25, said she learned from her children--ages 6 months to 6 years--after the shooting that their uncle had offered them cocaine.

Beginning last Friday night, Rodney went on a three-day drug bender, his brother said. Between numerous deliveries to his cocaine customers and being high himself, Rodney was strung out and paranoid Monday morning, his brother said.

His wife and their children left the home to visit a close friend that morning, he said, and the brothers were alone in the house. They were expecting a check, and Rodney was nervously checking the mailbox for its arrival, Traylor said. He also accused his brother of taking the check, Traylor said.

Told to Move Out

“(Reginald) said you are not acting right, you are causing too many problems, you are changing. You must move away from me and my family,” Grimes said.

Traylor said he told his brother that “ ‘you need to leave the cocaine alone . . . its a bad influence on my kids.’ . . . He was upset that I would question him and (tell him to) move out of his own house.”

The argument continued for about five minutes, Traylor said. Then, Rodney allegedly said ‘I’m going to k-i-l-l you’--I don’t want to say that in front of my kids. He said that in a fit of fury.” When Rodney “took his glasses off and started advancing towards me,” Traylor said, he ran into his bedroom and grabbed his wife’s .380 automatic pistol, a gift from her father.

Traylor, at 5-feet-8 and 185 pounds and with a herniated disc, pointed the gun at his 6-foot-4, 310-pound brother to ward him off because “I knew there was no way in the world I could take what he was capable of dishing out.”

“I shot him in the thigh. I aimed at his leg,” Traylor said. “I didn’t intend to kill him. I never heard of anyone dying of a leg wound.”

Rodney grabbed his thigh, said “ . . . you shot me in the leg” and ran into the house to have a friend who lives with the family call an ambulance, his brother said. Rodney was taken to the hospital by a close friend.

Traylor said he walked to the house next door and had a neighbor call police. Then he waited. He would later learn that the bullet struck his brother’s femoral artery and that Rodney lost a considerable amount of blood.

Traylor never saw his brother before he died less than 24 hours later. He was handcuffed in his yard and taken to the police station for questioning. Later, he was booked into jail, where he learned of Rodney’s death.

Grimes said doctors have told him the cocaine in Rodney’s system prevented his blood from coagulating properly and may have contributed to his death.

It was while Rodney was still at San Jose--where he led the team in tackles his senior year, 1980--that Traylor believes his brother was first “exposed” to cocaine. It was only recently that he began to sell it, Traylor added.

Insulation Installer

Rodney--who had worked as a technician for Memorex in Northern California and also with his brother installing home insulation--more recently had been finding part-time jobs as a bodyguard, Traylor said. A few weeks ago, Rodney returned to the sport he loved: football.

He had tried out for the San Diego Chargers in 1981 but was cut during training camp because, a team official said Tuesday, he was undersize. But this year Rodney had decided to give professional football one last try and began working out furiously. He attended “mini-camps” and intended to approach the Chargers and the Raiders, Traylor said. But he pulled a hamstring and that dream died.

Rodney was “disappointed” but not devastated, Traylor said. Last week he began working for no pay helping coach the freshman football team at Mater Dei High School. He proudly brought home his new coaching uniform last Friday.