Editors Note: I was going to leave this story alone, when the first account came out about a couple of BU players who were brutally attacked and Coach Jack Parker "alledged" that it was a "random crime."
Not so fast Jackie, now we're told there were multiple brawls, drunk hoochies being boxing referees and backup goalies in the fights. Backup goalies? In fights?
Some BU players were seriously hurt. We hope they recover quickly & completely. Now on with the story...
Not so fast Jackie, now we're told there were multiple brawls, drunk hoochies being boxing referees and backup goalies in the fights. Backup goalies? In fights?
Some BU players were seriously hurt. We hope they recover quickly & completely. Now on with the story...
The Boston Team Party
Boston University Hockey Players In Street Fight
From: The Daily Free Pressby Kevin Scheitrum and Allison Weinberger
After reviewing the incident with team members yesterday (this is often referred to as the "Cover Up Meeting" where the team gets together with Coach Parker to get the story straight), coach Jack Parker said last night that a Sunday morning altercation between Boston University men's hockey players and several assailants was not a random attack as he previously stated (The Olde "We-were-just-minding-our-own-bidness-at-4 AM" defense).
Seniors Kevin Schaeffer and Sean Sullivan were hospitalized Sunday after an altercation outside a Wadsworth Street residence, in which goalie and assistant captain John Curry also received minor injuries. Schaeffer was released from Brigham and Women's Hospital yesterday.
Parker said junior goalie Karson Gillespie (Whats the deal with college hockey goalies & fights this year?) and a friend not on the hockey team had been involved in a prior scuffle with two unknown assailants an hour before the brawl. One assailant was reportedly involved in the both incidents.
The attack occurred around 4 a.m. (I don't know about you, but I like my hockey players in bed at 4 am, since these things never seem to occur, at say 10 pm), when men in black hooded sweatshirts wielding baseball bats, wrenches and crowbars allegedly attacked several victims in front of 9 Wadsworth St. in Allston, according to a police report. Witness accounts of the altercation vary, but four neighbors who were present said the fight involved between 15 and 20 people and was the culmination of the two altercations. The police report, on the other hand, had indicated the altercation was a random assault perpetrated by only three people (You mean the BU players involved misled the cops?).
A junior lacrosse player, identified by a source close to the team who requested anonymity as Lauren Morton, was also hit with a bat in the left jaw."She saw [Sullivan] knocked out and went to grab him out of the fight because he was knocked out and bleeding," said the source, who was with the players earlier in the evening but was not present during the altercation. "She went and grabbed him and she got hit in the face with a bat. Nothing's broken [in her jaw]. It's just bad, so I think they blatantly hit her."
Curry was not hospitalized, while Sullivan was released from the hospital Sunday. Schaeffer was discharged Monday after suffering a fractured orbital bone and dislocated thumb.
"They don't know how his eye is, so they have to wait till that heals up, and then they'll make an evaluation whether or not they have to have surgery on it to repair it or not," Parker said. According at a witness, the assailant continued to bash Schaeffer's head after he had fallen to the ground. Parker, however, said the defenseman was hit just once (This doesn't jive with the eyewitness accounts).
"I saw some guy just going up and down with the bat, swinging it," said the witness, a Bunker Hill Community College student who requested that she be identified by her first name, Connie. "All I could see was the bat go up, the bat go down, the bat go up, the bat go down (see Jack, this sounds like more than "once")."
"The guy came running up and hit Schaeffer with a baseball bat," Parker said. "I think they just two-handed him -- one blow did all the damage."
Sullivan received staples in his head to close a gash created when he was struck by "some sort of instrument," according to Parker.
The first confrontation, involving Gillespie and a friend, occurred around 3 a.m., according to Connie and roommate Andrew Johanson, a Berklee School of Music sophomore. Parker corroborated the sequence of events, claiming that Gillespie left the party early to walk home a friend who had "too much to drink" (Now we're getting somewhere. Why wasn't I invited to this shindig?)." After leaving 9 Wadsworth St., Parker said, Gillespie and the friend encountered two men allegedly standing outside of 15 Wadsworth St. and exchanged "some words" with them."
Gillespie wound up getting in a fight with the guy and then another guy got involved with it, so it was a 2-on-1 with Gillespie (He's a goaltender, he sees 2 on 1's all the time) ," Parker said.
"His buddy . . . was useless to him (Sounds like the BU in Overtime games), and somebody went back in and told the guys at 9 Wadsworth that Gillespie was in a fight. So [Brian] McGuirk and Curry went down, McGuirk (the Crime Dog) first, and broke it up . . . Curry came down, by the time Curry (Is that Chicken Curry?) got there it was broken up completely and it was, they thought, the end of it."
Johanson said he saw the end of the first scuffle."I was watching TV," he said. "Then five minutes later, I got up after this huge uproar and there's a kid lying on the ground over [at 15 Wadsworth] with his shirt off. A short, fat, stubby no-neck type of deal (Discrition fits half the Lowell hockey team), he was on the ground curled in a ball and this other kid was kicking him and calling him a "pansy" (I'm confused...Which one of these guys was the BU player? The "pansy" or the kicker?)."
Johanson said he was sure, however, that the first fight ended with both sides going back to their respective houses.
"They finally got him inside," Johanson said of the man on the ground. "Then two minutes later, he came back with a bat (Walking Tall)."
McGuirk (the Crime Dog), after breaking up the first fight, quickly defused a second situation before returning to 9 Wadsworth St. with Curry and Gillespie, said Parker.
"He turned and said to him 'Hey, I told you this was over -- that's the end of it, get out of here (Come on Jack, Kids don't talk like that anymore...more like..."Yo Homeboy, get yo mofo azz outa here or We're going to lay some timber to the side of yo head"),'" Parker said of McGuirk (the Crime Dog). "The guy left."
"It stopped for a while," Connie confirmed. "I thought the peace came."
Then, as the team members left the party, "four to six" men walked toward 9 Wadsworth St. carrying bats, wrenches and hammers, Parker said. Johanson estimated that the fight ended up involving five people from each houses, while neighbor Kent Anderson estimated there were five to eight assailants (This is why we need to bring fighting back to college hockey. The BU players need to work on this at practice).
"The first guy tried to attack [Sullivan], and Sully saw him coming and went low on him and got at him and another guy hit Sully over the head with some type of instrument -- it might have been a wrench or something -- and caught him pretty good," Parker said. "He went down, then he got hit in the face with something, [gave him a] black eye.
"(Chicken) Curry immediately saw it happen and he went to turn and the guy suckered him with something, it wasn't his fist, he hit him with something, really bruised his eye up pretty good," Parker continued.
Schaeffer, who was walking out of the house with his sister Kelly in front of him, was "knocked out cold," Parker said. He then reportedly fell onto his sister, toppling down the steps that lead from the 9 Wadsworth St. porch to the street.
"When he did, he wrenched his left thumb and dislocated it so it looks like an 'S,'" Parker said. "And then a girl from the lacrosse team got hit with a bat and dislocated her jaw. "Then Schaeffer's sister was screaming so bad because her brother was lying on the ground unconscious that the attackers just took off and ran down the street," Parker continued. "Nobody knows what happened to them after that."
Then Morton, one of a "bunch of girls" (The hoochies) outside during the fight according to Connie, got involved."It was such a drunken mess," Connie said. "There were so many girls just trying to get in the way to break it up. I think [Morton] was throwing herself to protect the other kid. Hopefully, a guy wouldn't hit a girl with a bat."
Neighbors Anderson and Ken Gold, both juniors at Emerson College, watched the incident from a balcony across the street."
I was in bed when I started hearing anything, and I woke up because I heard a girl screaming very loudly 'Call 911,'" Gold said. "I heard people over there on the phone with 911 saying 'We need cops here.'"
"I saw the guys running away," said Anderson. "They were like 'Cops (The British) are coming, cops (The British) are coming,' and they ran down the street. They just ran down the street and turned the corner about two blocks away."
None of the witnesses mentioned the presence of a getaway car, which was described in the police report. But eventually, Johanson and Anderson said, Schaeffer was taken away on a stretcher.
An ambulance brought him to Brigham and Women's, Parker said, while one of the police cars transported Schaeffer's sister and Sullivan to the same hospital.
On Monday, a bloodstain still was visible on the sidewalk in front of 9 Wadsworth St., while other alleged remnants remained."
There was blood all over the front doorstep," Johanson said. "It was ridiculous. They tried to wash it off, but it wouldn't come off."
"I saw somebody over there [yesterday] picking up a bat in two halves," Gold said.
Officer David Estraba of the Boston Police Department told The Daily Free Press the investigation is ongoing and no suspects have been named as of yet. But the assailants were not BU students (The last thing we need is retaliation from the hockey players against the students who actually go to class), Parker and Johanson claim.
The events that transpired were ghastly, Parker said, but the night out was well within the team's rules."
Nothing good happens after two o'clock in the morning anyways (except sex), but I don't have any guys breaking any team rules," Parker said. "Here we have a team rule that you can't drink except for Saturday night. If you're under 21, you can't drink at all (anybody wanna bet there were BU players under 21 drinking at the party?). The guys were of age and it was Saturday night, so I don't have any problem with that. They were at a BU party for BU friends and all of a sudden they get accosted by some folks from out of town."
Curry and Sullivan were with the team Monday during a non-skating practice. They await the results of a concussion test, to be compared with a preseason baseline screening before being cleared to play."
I think they're all pissed off, aggravated that, A - it happened, and, B - that they have to deal with these type of assholes (and C - Loser Blogs like this one jump into the fray)," Parker said of his players.
"But more than anything else, they're concerned about their teammates."
As of Monday night, the players were not yet available for comment, said senior assistant director of athletic communications Brian Kelley (surprise, surprise, surprise).
Seniors Kevin Schaeffer and Sean Sullivan were hospitalized Sunday after an altercation outside a Wadsworth Street residence, in which goalie and assistant captain John Curry also received minor injuries. Schaeffer was released from Brigham and Women's Hospital yesterday.
Parker said junior goalie Karson Gillespie (Whats the deal with college hockey goalies & fights this year?) and a friend not on the hockey team had been involved in a prior scuffle with two unknown assailants an hour before the brawl. One assailant was reportedly involved in the both incidents.
The attack occurred around 4 a.m. (I don't know about you, but I like my hockey players in bed at 4 am, since these things never seem to occur, at say 10 pm), when men in black hooded sweatshirts wielding baseball bats, wrenches and crowbars allegedly attacked several victims in front of 9 Wadsworth St. in Allston, according to a police report. Witness accounts of the altercation vary, but four neighbors who were present said the fight involved between 15 and 20 people and was the culmination of the two altercations. The police report, on the other hand, had indicated the altercation was a random assault perpetrated by only three people (You mean the BU players involved misled the cops?).
A junior lacrosse player, identified by a source close to the team who requested anonymity as Lauren Morton, was also hit with a bat in the left jaw."She saw [Sullivan] knocked out and went to grab him out of the fight because he was knocked out and bleeding," said the source, who was with the players earlier in the evening but was not present during the altercation. "She went and grabbed him and she got hit in the face with a bat. Nothing's broken [in her jaw]. It's just bad, so I think they blatantly hit her."
Curry was not hospitalized, while Sullivan was released from the hospital Sunday. Schaeffer was discharged Monday after suffering a fractured orbital bone and dislocated thumb.
"They don't know how his eye is, so they have to wait till that heals up, and then they'll make an evaluation whether or not they have to have surgery on it to repair it or not," Parker said. According at a witness, the assailant continued to bash Schaeffer's head after he had fallen to the ground. Parker, however, said the defenseman was hit just once (This doesn't jive with the eyewitness accounts).
"I saw some guy just going up and down with the bat, swinging it," said the witness, a Bunker Hill Community College student who requested that she be identified by her first name, Connie. "All I could see was the bat go up, the bat go down, the bat go up, the bat go down (see Jack, this sounds like more than "once")."
"The guy came running up and hit Schaeffer with a baseball bat," Parker said. "I think they just two-handed him -- one blow did all the damage."
Sullivan received staples in his head to close a gash created when he was struck by "some sort of instrument," according to Parker.
The first confrontation, involving Gillespie and a friend, occurred around 3 a.m., according to Connie and roommate Andrew Johanson, a Berklee School of Music sophomore. Parker corroborated the sequence of events, claiming that Gillespie left the party early to walk home a friend who had "too much to drink" (Now we're getting somewhere. Why wasn't I invited to this shindig?)." After leaving 9 Wadsworth St., Parker said, Gillespie and the friend encountered two men allegedly standing outside of 15 Wadsworth St. and exchanged "some words" with them."
Gillespie wound up getting in a fight with the guy and then another guy got involved with it, so it was a 2-on-1 with Gillespie (He's a goaltender, he sees 2 on 1's all the time) ," Parker said.
"His buddy . . . was useless to him (Sounds like the BU in Overtime games), and somebody went back in and told the guys at 9 Wadsworth that Gillespie was in a fight. So [Brian] McGuirk and Curry went down, McGuirk (the Crime Dog) first, and broke it up . . . Curry came down, by the time Curry (Is that Chicken Curry?) got there it was broken up completely and it was, they thought, the end of it."
Johanson said he saw the end of the first scuffle."I was watching TV," he said. "Then five minutes later, I got up after this huge uproar and there's a kid lying on the ground over [at 15 Wadsworth] with his shirt off. A short, fat, stubby no-neck type of deal (Discrition fits half the Lowell hockey team), he was on the ground curled in a ball and this other kid was kicking him and calling him a "pansy" (I'm confused...Which one of these guys was the BU player? The "pansy" or the kicker?)."
Johanson said he was sure, however, that the first fight ended with both sides going back to their respective houses.
"They finally got him inside," Johanson said of the man on the ground. "Then two minutes later, he came back with a bat (Walking Tall)."
McGuirk (the Crime Dog), after breaking up the first fight, quickly defused a second situation before returning to 9 Wadsworth St. with Curry and Gillespie, said Parker.
"He turned and said to him 'Hey, I told you this was over -- that's the end of it, get out of here (Come on Jack, Kids don't talk like that anymore...more like..."Yo Homeboy, get yo mofo azz outa here or We're going to lay some timber to the side of yo head"),'" Parker said of McGuirk (the Crime Dog). "The guy left."
"It stopped for a while," Connie confirmed. "I thought the peace came."
Then, as the team members left the party, "four to six" men walked toward 9 Wadsworth St. carrying bats, wrenches and hammers, Parker said. Johanson estimated that the fight ended up involving five people from each houses, while neighbor Kent Anderson estimated there were five to eight assailants (This is why we need to bring fighting back to college hockey. The BU players need to work on this at practice).
"The first guy tried to attack [Sullivan], and Sully saw him coming and went low on him and got at him and another guy hit Sully over the head with some type of instrument -- it might have been a wrench or something -- and caught him pretty good," Parker said. "He went down, then he got hit in the face with something, [gave him a] black eye.
"(Chicken) Curry immediately saw it happen and he went to turn and the guy suckered him with something, it wasn't his fist, he hit him with something, really bruised his eye up pretty good," Parker continued.
Schaeffer, who was walking out of the house with his sister Kelly in front of him, was "knocked out cold," Parker said. He then reportedly fell onto his sister, toppling down the steps that lead from the 9 Wadsworth St. porch to the street.
"When he did, he wrenched his left thumb and dislocated it so it looks like an 'S,'" Parker said. "And then a girl from the lacrosse team got hit with a bat and dislocated her jaw. "Then Schaeffer's sister was screaming so bad because her brother was lying on the ground unconscious that the attackers just took off and ran down the street," Parker continued. "Nobody knows what happened to them after that."
Then Morton, one of a "bunch of girls" (The hoochies) outside during the fight according to Connie, got involved."It was such a drunken mess," Connie said. "There were so many girls just trying to get in the way to break it up. I think [Morton] was throwing herself to protect the other kid. Hopefully, a guy wouldn't hit a girl with a bat."
Neighbors Anderson and Ken Gold, both juniors at Emerson College, watched the incident from a balcony across the street."
I was in bed when I started hearing anything, and I woke up because I heard a girl screaming very loudly 'Call 911,'" Gold said. "I heard people over there on the phone with 911 saying 'We need cops here.'"
"I saw the guys running away," said Anderson. "They were like 'Cops (The British) are coming, cops (The British) are coming,' and they ran down the street. They just ran down the street and turned the corner about two blocks away."
None of the witnesses mentioned the presence of a getaway car, which was described in the police report. But eventually, Johanson and Anderson said, Schaeffer was taken away on a stretcher.
An ambulance brought him to Brigham and Women's, Parker said, while one of the police cars transported Schaeffer's sister and Sullivan to the same hospital.
On Monday, a bloodstain still was visible on the sidewalk in front of 9 Wadsworth St., while other alleged remnants remained."
There was blood all over the front doorstep," Johanson said. "It was ridiculous. They tried to wash it off, but it wouldn't come off."
"I saw somebody over there [yesterday] picking up a bat in two halves," Gold said.
Officer David Estraba of the Boston Police Department told The Daily Free Press the investigation is ongoing and no suspects have been named as of yet. But the assailants were not BU students (The last thing we need is retaliation from the hockey players against the students who actually go to class), Parker and Johanson claim.
The events that transpired were ghastly, Parker said, but the night out was well within the team's rules."
Nothing good happens after two o'clock in the morning anyways (except sex), but I don't have any guys breaking any team rules," Parker said. "Here we have a team rule that you can't drink except for Saturday night. If you're under 21, you can't drink at all (anybody wanna bet there were BU players under 21 drinking at the party?). The guys were of age and it was Saturday night, so I don't have any problem with that. They were at a BU party for BU friends and all of a sudden they get accosted by some folks from out of town."
Curry and Sullivan were with the team Monday during a non-skating practice. They await the results of a concussion test, to be compared with a preseason baseline screening before being cleared to play."
I think they're all pissed off, aggravated that, A - it happened, and, B - that they have to deal with these type of assholes (and C - Loser Blogs like this one jump into the fray)," Parker said of his players.
"But more than anything else, they're concerned about their teammates."
As of Monday night, the players were not yet available for comment, said senior assistant director of athletic communications Brian Kelley (surprise, surprise, surprise).
13 comments:
Parker should re-evaluate his team rules (Or I'm sure BU will do it for him).
You simply can't allow your scholarship athletes to be drunk in the streets of Boston at 4:00 am during the season.
Agreed.
This is a black eye for the university and once the media sink their teeth into this juicy story it can run out of control like the Duke Lacrosse Story.
My inside source says that the attackers were BU students
Anon #1,
Let's hope thats not true, because if so it makes a sorry situation even worse. I guess find out soon enough.
parker's rules (and DG's comments) remind of a collegewrestling coach who said 'no girls' after 10pm... After 3 pregnancies in 2 years, he realized that conception often occurs in mid afternoon. (Puck Swami, take note, so does alcohol induced stupidity)
Given the size of the situation, and the 'gang' like nature, this is going to be a nasty story in the boston press. Even when first reported, I doubted this wasn't the escalation of something prior... little did we know the first story was cooked for the early edition.
Anon #2,
I agree. The first article didn't pass the "sniff test" but how could you argue with the horrible injuries suffered by the players.
Now if more and more stuff comes out...underage drinking, not telling the police everyone who was involved I think it becomes a very difficult case to prosecute.
If I'm BU, I want this case to "go away" ASAP.
Hold on now...You're making assumptions regarding underage drinking as well as victims, witnesses, and party hosts not telling the cops the whole truth. Until more information is reported, I think you're better off not making such assumptions b/c the focus RIGHT NOW should be on the crime itself and the well being of the victims.
Would your opinion be the same if the same terrible thing ever happened to DU hockey players? Would you be questioning their judgment and implying there was wrongdoing on their part? Would you be jumping all over Gwozdecky regarding establishing stricter team rules?
Anon #3,
Do you expect us to believe there weren't people under the age of 21 at the party?
Believe me the party sounded like a great time right up until the weapons showed up. I get tired around 1 PM, so I probably would have missed the fireworks.
About the Gwozdecky/DU question. Yes I'd be very upset with DU and the coaches if this happened at Denver. This event could have easily happened at DU or any other school. I'm surprised that more BU alums aren't pissed off with Parker & BU.
I'm not naive enough to actually believe that there were people at the party who were under 21. But that's not the point of this and I just had an issue w/ you trying to make this into a bigger deal and fanning the flames on this issue.
BTW, I'm watching the 11:00 news in Boston right now and the story only got about 15 seconds tonight, 10+ minutes into the broadcast. So, I think you're making an even bigger deal out of it right now than even the Boston media is.
FYI, I'm a BU alum from the 90s who's still actively involved in the BU community and have spoken to quite a few people about this. The people whom I spoke to directly about this are far more concerned right now about the fact that 4 student-athletes were attacked w/ dangerous weapons and injured as a result, and not focused as of right now. I'm not gonna preoccupy myself right now w/ questioning Parker or the University, or using this incident as ammunition against someone who has made more positive contributions to BU than most other people.
Everyone agrees that the health of the victims is the #1 priority.
A mention on a local newscast even for 15 seconds is significant IMO.
The Duke Lacrosse story got more national publicity months after the incident than when it occured. I'm not comparing the two events just pointing out that as facts emerge the publicity levels can change.
Hey dggoddard-
I like the blog, but you're article about the BU incident is obnoxious and childish with all of the cute little quips that are supposed to be funny. Kenny Schaefer could've died from those injuries and it's no laughing matter. How would you like it if somebody wrote that way about Viedeman's injury. Not funny. Classless and disrespectful.
Secondly, slow down a little trying to pin the blame on Jack Parker. Every team in the country goes out late and drinks just like all other college students. Parker is one guy who has control of his team even if his rules aren't the most stringent. Anybody remember Lucas Dora getting in a late night brawl in Boston?? The night before the National Championship!!??
You can't always blame the coach.
Anyhow, I enjoy the blog -- just not this time...
Point taken. I knew I was going to take some flak for using this format to cover this event. You may very well be right that it was classless of me to do it via this method.
I would not have covered this incident if it had been a random attack.
This blog publicized the incident and warns everyone who reads it of what can happen if a situation isn't handled properly.
Some people have blamed the police, but no one has asked why the police weren't called after the first fight?
Some people have blamed the lack of cerfew, pointing out that it might have prevented the incident.
Virtually every "incident" that involved college hockey players last season involved alcohol. The same is true so far this season. (see "Bad Boyz" in Index)
I would have covered this story differently if it happened to Veideman but if other blogs took their shots I would have linked to their articles.
Finally, this blog uses humor to cover issues pertinant to the WCHA & college hockey. Rightly or wrongly thats not going to change.
Thanks for reading and thanks especially for commenting...
Thanks for your sincere response. I understand your style with the blog and I typically really enjoy it. Just not this particular time. I think this really is a sad story and I hope the kids from BU make a full recovery. Same said for Veideman.
Keep up the good work.
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