A Friend Tells What He Had Seen : Scene: Brigmond arrived near the lake shortly before crash. Boat went under dock.

By the time Perry Brigmond arrived at Tim Crews’ house for dinner Monday night, Crews and teammates Steve Olin and Bob Ojeda were already fishing out on Little Lake Nellie.

Dinner was at 6 p.m., but Brigmond didn’t arrive until about 7:15. He ate quickly and then, along with Fernando Montes, the Cleveland Indians’ strength trainer, drove Crews’ truck down to the bank of the lake to try to spot the boat. It was dark, but the lake is small, and he spotted the light of Crews’ boat about 240 yards away from him. He flashed the truck lights to let Crews know he had arrived so Crews would come back and pick him up.

That’s where Crews was headed when his Skeeter bass boat hit the side of a neighbor’s dock. The boat knocked out the side cross supports, went under the landing and stopped on the other side.

There wasn’t a loud sound at impact, but Brigmond could tell the boat had hit something. He saw the boat light rise when the boat started up, then saw it fall. The boat stopped about 150 yards away from him, so he yelled out to them. He got no answer.

Brigmond and Montes jumped in the truck and drove around the lake to the neighbor’s dock. As they ran down the hill to the boat, Ojeda was screaming for help. He was the only one conscious.

Brigmond found Ojeda, Olin and Crews still sitting in the boat’s bench seat, but their bodies were scrunched together and they were cut and bleeding. The boat had cleared the landing, but their bodies hadn’t. The six-inch wood overhang hit Crews and Ojeda in the head and Olin in the neck.

The boat had traveled only about 80 yards toward shore before it hit the end of the dock, which juts out into the water about 50 yards. There were no lights on the dock.

Olin died immediately. Crews appeared to have a brain injury, so he was airlifted to the regional trauma center about 35 miles away in Orlando, where he died early Tuesday morning. Ojeda had a serious head injury, so he was taken to South Lake Memorial Hospital about 10 minutes away and went directly into surgery. He is in serious condition but stable and expected to fully recover.

The dock landing is still standing, the damage hardly noticeable. Atop the landing sits a park bench, empty and undisturbed.

*

Everything you see when you look east across Little Lake Nellie from the accident site belonged to Tim Crews--a sprawling ranch home and barn on 48 perfectly manicured acres and a newly planted pasture. Crews, his wife, Laurie, and three small children had just moved into the house two months ago, but he had been working on the house for more than a year. He had owned the boat for about five years.

The Crewses already owned six horses and planned for more. Crews, who loved to fish, was from Florida. He grew up in Tampa and went to King High. On the Friday before he died, Crews attended a ceremony there to retire his jersey. The school painted a sign on the outfield wall in his honor and unveiled it during festivities.

Monday was the only day off the Indians had scheduled during spring training, so Crews decided to entertain in his new home. The afternoon was spent horseback riding and dinner was scheduled for 6 p.m. followed by night bass fishing. Brigmond, who has been Crews’ friend for about five years, drove over from Orlando. They were fishing buddies and had lived near each other in Orlando before Crews moved here.

But on Tuesday afternoon, all Brigmond had left was memories, which he recounted sparingly as he stood on the sandy grass above the dock that had claimed his friend’s life.

Patiently, he talked with the nonstop crowd of newspaper, television and radio reporters who had descended on this small, rural community in central Florida. Brigmond is in real estate and also builds houses and had helped Crews with his.

Brigmond had been asked to come to the site to help local authorities, not to meet with reporters. Still, he tried to answer all the questions, even the ones about whether he smelled alcohol on the players’ breath or how fast the boat had been going. He politely replied that alcohol was the last thing he was thinking about when he reached the players. About the speed, Brigmond said the boat couldn’t have been going fast, or else the players would have been thrown into the middle of the lake.

Meanwhile, a few curious neighbors from the other side of the lake stopped by from time to time. The boat--which suffered minor damage--had been pulled from the lake and impounded. There was a lot of blood on the carpet and seats, especially on the passenger side, where Olin and Ojeda were sitting. There was also blood on the left side of the boat covering part of the gas cap.

Divers had been searching for clues all morning for the cause of the accident, periodically returning with items such as seat cushions.

But the neighbors who actually live on the quiet cul-de-sac didn’t know Crews very well, and the majority of them closed their doors Tuesday and stayed away.

“We know who he is and I have met Laurie, but they just moved here, I don’t think it has even been two months,” said Therese Neesi, who lives a couple of houses down from the accident but wasn’t home when it happened.

Jetta Heinrich, who owns the dock that Crews hit, was sitting in her screened-in porch about 75 yards away when the accident happened. She said after the accident that she ran out with her portable phone and screamed to the players, but they didn’t answer back. But Tuesday, she didn’t want to talk anymore. She even turned away the crew from the television series, “A Current Affair,” which she had agreed to be on.

Some reporters, speculating that Heinrich’s dock extended out longer than others, actually walked the length of other docks for comparison, but they seemed to all be within the same range. Others had questions about lighting regulations for docks.

“She (Jetta) told us she saw the whole accident and she would go on the show, but then she talked with her lawyer and they told her to put a lid on it,” said Tony Zumbado of “A Current Affair,” who drove up from Miami to tape the show.

Heinrich had been the one who called for the ambulance.

“She didn’t know what had happened either,” Brigmond said. “Anybody who has ever fished has hit a boat dock, believe me. When the paramedic got here he told me it was the fourth time this year a boat had hit.

“But I didn’t hear any impact. I was in shock when I got over here. It took me a minute to realize what happened. Their heads had hit the bottom of the railing and all three of them had massive head injuries.

“(Bob Ojeda) was yelling for someone to help Timmy and Steve, he was more concerned for them than for himself. But he was cut up pretty bad. And they were all still sitting on the bench seat.”

The lake level is especially low, elevating the dock to about four feet above the water. Crews’ boat sat about 2 1/2 feet above the water and passengers on the bench seat sat up another 1 1/2 feet. It put their heads level nearly with the overhang.

After the paramedics arrived, Brigmond drove back to Crews’ house and picked up the players’ wives. They had been watching television and had no idea anything had happened. Brigmond told them there had been an accident and they needed to come. After Crews was taken away by helicopter, Brigmond drove Laurie Crews to the hospital to be with her husband, who died at 5:40 a.m.

Brigmond fielded questions for nearly two hours, getting a respite periodically by walking behind the police lines and standing alone at the edge of the water. Sometimes he stood with his friend, Maxie Deitz, and just stared.

Brigmond was asked if he has wondered that he might have been in the boat had he been on time.

“That’s not a role I’m supposed to play,” he said. “That belongs to someone else.”