Boys’ Night Out Became a Nightmare : There Are Still Questions About Crash That Left Seahawks’ Frier Paralyzed

On the first night of December, around 7:30, Kelly Butler drove through a corridor of twinkling Christmas lights in this lakeside village to a combination billiards parlor and pub called The Shark to pick up her boyfriend, Mike Frier, 25, a 6-foot-5, 299-pound defensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks with whom she has a baby daughter. He wasn’t there.

Five of the football team’s players had been inside The Shark, playing pool on what Butler called “a boys’ night out.” She had dropped off Frier at 4:30 and promised to pick him up. A bartender told police that the five men had consumed approximately 10 beers and did not seem to be, in his professional opinion, drunk.

From a pay phone inside the pool hall, Butler had her boyfriend paged. Frier’s beeper went off in the back seat of a 1992 Oldsmobile Bravada with Indiana license plates belonging to teammate Wilbur Lamar Smith, 24, a Seahawk running back. Up front with Smith sat the team’s superstar, Chris Warren, also a running back, in fact the American Football Conference’s leading rusher. Question is, which man sat behind the wheel?

Police presumed it was Warren. They slapped handcuffs on him and charged him with vehicular assault. Warren’s attorney, however, says Smith was the driver. So does Smith’s attorney. And so does Butler, who heard this directly from her boyfriend, just after doctors fused the broken vertebrae in his neck, placed him in cervical traction and prepared him for a lifetime of paralysis from the neck down.

The music inside the Olds was evidently quite loud. Frier had neglected to tell his girlfriend that he had a ride. Upon receiving her page, he leaned forward to let Warren and Smith know that he needed to find a phone. Warren suggested that they drive to his place in Redmond, no more than six miles away. But then, patting his pockets, Warren suddenly realized that he had forgotten his house keys in Kirkland, at the football team’s training camp.

At a reported 8:40 p.m. on the rainy night in question, the utility vehicle registered to Smith traveled northbound down 108th Avenue Northeast, running parallel to the banks of Lake Washington off to the passengers’ side. They passed an espresso and pastry shop called the Muffin Break and then a Kirkland fire station, approaching the little gray schoolhouse, gaily decorated for the holidays, that marks the turnoff to the Seahawks’ camp.

A police sergeant said the initial indication was that the vehicle carrying the players pulled into a left-turn lane to pass another car. An eyewitness, Dave Needham, 19, of Kirkland, reported that he and his friends heard the very loud music, “a big, booming bass,” turned to look and to their amazement saw the Olds swerve off the road and into a roadside electrical-power pole with a noisy crash.

The teen-agers ran to a nearby house, one of them screaming, “Call 911!”

All electricity went out in about 4,500 homes in Kirkland and nearby Bellevue, including the residence of Tom Flores, the Seahawks’ general manager and coach. He had just gotten home from practice and had no idea that three of his players were responsible for the blackout, that they were, at that moment, pinned inside the wreckage of a small truck, its front end so smashed that the steering wheel was practically pressed against the utility pole.

The wait was terrible. Most of the windows were broken. Needham stood nearby, virtually helpless until authorities came. He said, “The guy in back (Frier) was doubled over, yelling. The man was in incredible pain.”

When fire fighters finally began working to free the men from the debris, crackling showers of electrical sparks descended on them from atop the power line.

A second witness said he looked into the truck and saw a case of beer, Bud Ice, partly crumpled. A detective from the Kirkland police, Jim O’Toole, confirmed that empty beer cans had been found.

No skid marks were visible on the damp pavement. “We’re not talking drag racing,” Kirkland Police Sgt. Mark Smith said. “We’re talking people driving too fast for conditions.”

The next morning, the news of the accident hit the people of Seattle with considerable impact. Details were sketchy, some incorrect. “Chris Warren Arrested,” a headline read, and this much was true. The identity of his paralyzed teammate was withheld in many accounts, pending notification of the family. At least two newspapers misidentified the make of the vehicle and one of them, the Journal-American of Bellevue, described it as a “Chevy Blazer driven by Warren,” possibly erring twice in five words.

What followed in days to come was a veritable Warren Report of fact-finding investigation. To this day, police have yet to formally exclude Warren as the driver of the vehicle, despite denials all around. They have dusted the steering wheel for fingerprints but not yet revealed their findings. Warren also agreed to a lie-detector test, administered by a University of Utah professor who also tested serial killer Ted Bundy and kidnap victim Patty Hearst. The professor, David Raskin, announced that Warren had passed.

“What this does, it lends substantial credence to Lamar Smith’s admission that he was the driver and Warren’s denial,” said Warren’s attorney, John Wolfe. Warren’s agent, Richard Schaeffer of Baltimore, issued a statement that he was confident that Warren was not the driver and that “there was a misunderstanding at the accident scene.”

Witnesses told police that Warren was the driver. Police obtained a warrant to search the vehicle and dusted the steering wheel for prints. King County Prosecutor spokesman Dan Donohue said, “We are moving very slowly, very deliberately. We are not going to jump into this thing.”

Police reportedly are re-contacting witnesses.

Warren has clammed up, at his attorney’s behest. He has two cracked ribs. Smith has foot and neck injuries and cannot play football. Frier remains in intensive care, where teammates have not been permitted to visit. He recently developed post-operative pneumonia, a common complication of quadriplegia, and fluid is being sucked from his lungs. Frier is now breathing with the aid of a tube.

“The likelihood of his walking again is very poor,” said the neurological surgeon, Michael Schlitt, who performed the spinal fusion on Frier. “He will almost certainly be wheelchair-dependent.”

Warren, meantime, has not missed a minute of football. He has rarely played better. He rushed last week at Houston for a career-high 185 yards. Beforehand, he kiddingly kicked at a ground-level TV camera as the Seahawks ran onto the field--not menacingly, but playfully. Maybe he is making an effort to lighten the mood.

After his first game after the accident, Warren said, “I am not answering those questions about Mike.”

In the opinion of columnist Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times, he was “as matter-of-fact as a ticket-taker, as cold as an Arctic wind.”

This has been said of him before.

*

Every so often, Warren wonders why he is not a brighter star, why he is not a more popular player among fans. People tell him it’s Seattle. That the team is weak and the exposure is poor. Somewhere else, had someone rushed for 1,000 yards three consecutive seasons the way Warren has, that player might be as marketable as Emmitt Smith. Then again, Thurman Thomas played in several Super Bowls, and how popular is he?

It is a favorite story of linebacker Rod Stephens that in public places in Seattle, their bodies being large and their faces looking vaguely familiar, athletes are approached by people who ask, “ ‘Y’all play for the Seahawks?’ So we say yes. So they ask for an autograph and Warren signs and they say, ‘Oh, yeah! Now we know who you are!’ ”

Even when he was finally invited to join other NFL notables for something called “NFL Kickoff ‘94: Run to Daylight” before this season, Warren was reminded of his lack of stature. A box of custom-made jerseys for Jerome Bettis, Ricky Watters, Eric Metcalf and other top running backs was opened and the shirts were dispersed. Warren’s had the wrong number, 32 instead of 42.

“They gave me (former Seahawk) John L. Williams’ number,” he said.

Another time, Warren insists, Howie Long of the Raiders was speaking to him about being a running back for Seattle and how it must be difficult to get playing time because of this guy Chris Warren who plays up there.

Warren said, “He was talking to me the whole time about me and he didn’t know it was me.”

Perhaps were Warren to show the warmth to outsiders that he does to teammates, he might be suitably famous. He has been known to treat blockers to $1,000 dinners. He bought each of them Rolex wristwatches as gifts last Christmas.

After Warren was named to the Pro Bowl last week, he announced that he was buying first-class airplane tickets to Hawaii for the offensive linemen for the Feb. 5 game.

“I owe them at least that much,” Warren said.

It also was Warren, with no small measure of irony, who one month ago, as he again neared the 1,000-yard mark, tried but failed to take teammates on the town after practice.

At the time he said, “Almost all of them had other commitments. I can never get all the guys together. Everyone has their own lives. They have girlfriends or wives wanting them to do things in their off-time. I understand that. It’s no big deal. I don’t want them to get in trouble, saying that they had to do something with me.”

Funny thing about that. Ever since childhood, Warren has been seen, more or less, as standoffish. His mother said that in Little League baseball, Chris would hit a home run, round the bases, return to the dugout and sit without a word or a smile. Regina Eagle said of her son, “He’d just be sitting there like, ‘Go away.’ ”

Similar sentiments came from his high school football coach in Fairfax, Va., where ability was more Warren’s thing than sociability. Nick Hilgert said he would need Warren for only three quarters because by then the team would be leading by several touchdowns.

“He wasn’t someone who jumped up and down and put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Well, look at me!’ ” Hilgert recalled.

But oh, could he look good. Warren’s mother said Chris was so conscious of his appearance, she had to buy a washboard and special soap to scrub the grass stains from his uniform, because mere laundering wasn’t enough. Chris even cleaned his shoes in the sink with a toothbrush. “He wanted to be immaculate,” she said.

What he forgot to be was academic. All the major colleges came calling and Warren picked nearby Virginia. Offensive tackle Ray Roberts of the Seahawks was there at the time and couldn’t wait to see this kid who people said could catch punts behind his back. Seahawk linebacker Andy Heck played in high school against Warren and remembered being dragged for 15 yards into the end zone, trying to tackle him. Heck said, “He even beat us at the buzzer in the basketball playoffs.”

But the D he got in Greek mythology and the same grade he got in biology cost Warren his eligibility, not with the NCAA but with the more demanding university. Warren enrolled at an academy called Ferrum, so intimate that teachers dined with students. It was so anonymous to people from the sports world, though, Warren later joked, “They must wonder if it’s a black college.”

Scouts from the Seahawks made an appointment to see Warren. Where they ended up seeing him was at a rest stop along Interstate 81, somewhere between Roanoke, Va., and the North Carolina border. Warren’s car had broken down on his way to see the Seahawks. Player personnel director Mike Allman told him to stay put. He and his associates cleared out parking spaces at the rest area, threw Warren a few passes and picked him in the fourth round on draft day.

He waited two years for someone to hand him the football or for Coach Chuck Knox to leave. After carrying 17 times from scrimmage over two seasons, Warren was given his chance by Flores. Only five NFL backs topped 1,000 yards in both 1992 and 1993, among them Warren. This season he leads the AFC in rushing and total yards. With 120 yards rushing today against the Raiders, he will break Curt Warner’s single-season club record.

And no busted ribs can stop him.

On the Saturday night after the accident, Warren slept in his own bed, rather than at the team’s hotel.

“I had to think about it before I made a decision,” he told John Clayton of the Tacoma News-Tribune. “It’s not like I made the decision (to play) right away when I woke up. I had a few days to make it.”

Warren showered, shaved, then phoned Clarence Shelmon, who coaches the running backs, to say he would play against Indianapolis.

Entering the locker room, Warren encountered his teammates for the first time. He couldn’t slip in unnoticed.

“It’s hard to go into a locker room and not be noticed,” Warren said. “There were a number of players who greeted me and just said they were praying for me. It was like a comfort zone for me.”

Some of this comfort came from teammate Eugene Robinson, who said, “I gave the brother a hug just to let him know that he’s not out there by himself, and said, ‘I’m praying for you and will continue to pray for you.’ ” Praying for Warren to do what, he didn’t say.

Mack Strong began the game in his place, but fumbled a screen pass on Seattle’s first possession. In came Warren, wearing a flak jacket over ribs too tender to bandage.

Seahawk tackle Roberts said, “Even if he had just dressed and come out, I think it would have helped him. For Chris, I think this was his way of being at peace with himself. The more he sits around and thinks, the worse it becomes.”

What else he was thinking, Warren pretty much kept to himself.

“Any soreness?” someone asked.

“Of course there was soreness,” Warren snapped. “I’ve been in a car wreck.”

*

So had Mike Frier. In the intensive-care ward of Overlake Hospital medical center in Bellevue, the big tackle was having his feet massaged by his girlfriend. He whispered to her that he could feel it. He was even moving both arms, although he could move nothing else.

“He’s unbelievable, though,” Butler said. “Before the surgery, he was joking with the nurses, joking with me. They wheeled him into the operating room and he was still joking. He knows the situation himself, but you wouldn’t have known something was wrong with him.”

Frier appeared in 34 NFL games and will appear in no more. Like Warren, he came from a small-college background, at Appalachian State, and beat the odds. In 1992, the Seahawks tried to hide him on the practice squad in a roster move, but the Cincinnati Bengals got wise and claimed him on waivers. He didn’t like it there and complained about his lack of playing time. The instant Cincinnati set him free, Seattle snapped him back up.

At the woodland training camp nestled amid the tall green firs, Seahawk defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy sits and does what Warren has been told not to do--talk about Frier.

“I was going to take him under my wing,” Kennedy said. “I helped him rent a car when he got here. This isn’t a new experience for me. I lost my friend Jerome Brown in a car crash like this. I just wish I’d gotten to know Mike better. About all I do know is how much he loved that baby girl of his.”

Flores said he had begun to use Frier more and that he had played particularly well against Kansas City. The accident saddened the coach, but he decided against lecturing the team about being careful because “emotions were pretty sensitive at that point” and because he thought the danger was self-evident. Twelve days later, cornerback Orlando Watters was arrested for drunken driving and five other violations.

Flores this time told all the players directly through Watters, “You screwed up. Every player is an adult and has to be held accountable for what he does in his personal life.”

As for himself, Flores said, “I can’t go home with each one of them. I can’t lock them in a dorm.”

The coach wasn’t sure how to handle the first incident. He instructed Warren to go home and think for himself.

“All the confusion of who was driving, all the stories coming out, it became bigger than life,” Flores said. “People kept reminding everybody, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve got a man in the hospital who’s paralyzed. Let’s think about him.’ Yet the games go on. I told Chris to make the decision and we’ll go with it. He’s still sore, but he had a career day.

“Chris is not a talkative guy, but you could see it in his eyes. He was feeling a lot of emotion. Perhaps this was good therapy for him.”

Mike Frier’s therapy will continue for months. He has no feeling in his hands or legs. There is slight movement in his biceps. His temperature has returned to normal, now that he is breathing with the aid of a ventilator.

Lamar Smith has a chip fracture in his neck and a foot injury worse than first believed. He is sidelined for the rest of the season and awaiting results of the police’s continuing investigation into whether he was driving the car.

Chris Warren was to be honored Saturday by the Rainier District Youth Athletic Assn. as its role model of the year. He did say of Mike Frier, “I wish I could say ‘Hi’ to him right now with a capital H.” It is unknown whether he will again ask his teammates out after practice, or whether they will have previous commitments.