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Browns WR Stallworth charged with DUI manslaughter in March accident
Published by Bob Schultz on April 1, 2009
Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth was charged Wednesday with killing a pedestrian last month while driving drunk.
An arrest warrant charging Stallworth, 28, with DUI manslaughter was filed in Miami in the March 14 accident that killed 59-year-old Mario Reyes. If convicted, Stallworth would face a maximum 15-year prison sentence.
Stallworth’s blood-alcohol level after the crash was .126, well above Florida’s legal limit of .08, according to results of a blood test. Stallworth also will be charged with DUI, which carries a possible six-month sentence plus fines and community service for first offenders.
Stallworth, who is expected to surrender in court Thursday, released a statement last month saying he was “grief-stricken” over the accident. Prosecutors said they will ask that he be released on $200,000 bail.
A Miami Beach police report said that Reyes was not in a crosswalk on busy MacArthur Causeway when he was struck by the Bentley luxury car driven by Stallworth. The construction crane operator was trying to catch a bus home after finishing his work shift around 7:15 a.m.
The report also quoted Stallworth as saying he flashed his lights at Reyes in an attempted warning and that Stallworth was driving about 50 mph in a 40-mph zone.
An additional police affidavit filed Wednesday said that on the morning of the crash, Stallworth was drinking at a club in the posh Fountainebleau hotel on South Beach. He left to go to a nearby home — it’s not clear if the home was one of Stallworth’s three Miami-area properties — and then headed out to the causeway, where he struck Reyes.
“I hit a man lying in the road,” Stallworth told officers arriving to investigate the crash, according to the affidavit. One officer smelled alcohol on Stallworth’s breath and said that his eyes appear “bloodshot and watery.”
Stallworth’s attorney, Christopher Lyons, didn’t immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.
Stallworth signed a seven-year, $35 million contract with the Browns before last season, but he was injured for most of the year. He previously played for the New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints.
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