FAYETTEVILLE — Bobby Petrino’s decision-making was bad enough, lying as he did to his boss and to the public about that motorcycle accident that threatens to cost him his multimilliondollar coaching job.
But there were legitimate questions, too, about what role a State Police captain might have played in Petrino’s initial cover-up of the fact that a 25-yearold woman who works for the University of Arkansas football program was riding with him that day.
Capt. Lance King, who has worked the security detail for the Razorbacks’ head coach, became part of the story when he met Petrino at a Fayetteville intersection and ferried the seriously injured coach to a local hospital.
On Monday, State Police released both a detailed narrative from King and a news release stating King “did not violate any State Police policy or state laws” in his response the day of the wreck or in the subsequent chain of events.
The release further asserted that King’s statement was “not at any time a part of an internal investigation” and was intended just to be responsive to questions “unrelated to the crash investigation” raised by the public’s representatives.
State Police were getting questions from the media about King’s actions. They would have kept coming, had his commanders not sought answers from the trooper.
Some questions will linger, but State Police correctly attempted to get the whole story out.
King, called to the Little Rock headquarters “to brief the command staft on this crash,” provided a lengthy written statement that does answer a number of questions.
It turns out King initiated contact with the coach, after hearing from a State Police sergeant investigating a motorcycle accident the bike belonged to Petrino.
King called the coach’s cellphone and left a message Petrino’s motorcycle had been involved in an accident “and I wanted to call and check on you.” The message drew a response soon after from “an unidentifi ed female,” who called from Petrino’s phone, asking King to meetthem to take the coach to the hospital.
Petrino, remember, had left the scene of the accident near Crosses in Madison County, riding with passers-by who stopped to help him and a woman passenger. She was later identified as Jessica Dorrell, recently hired to Petrino’s staft .
Based on the State Police report of the accident, which was done by two troopers other than King, and on a 911 call reporting the accident, Petrino declined to have an ambulance called and instead headed to the hospital with the passersby.
King’s narrative lays out what he saw and what he did when he met them at a Fayetteville intersection and transferred the “visibly injured” Petrino to the trooper’s unmarked vehicle.
The bloodied coach, who “was hardly able to speak, only groaning,” was concerned he might have broken his neck, wrote King, who also didn’t call an ambulance but instead headed toward an emergency room with the injured coach, blue lights fl ashing.
It turned out the coach wanted to go to a dift erent hospital, where his doctor would meet him. The coach provided directions to King, who didn’t knowwhere it was.
Signifi cantly, on his way to meet the coach, King did report what was happening to his State Police supervisor, who then told him to “thoroughly investigate the accident.”
King’s narrative, however, revealed he didn’t ask some obvious questions, like the identity of the woman who called him back on Petrino’s phone or even of the passers-by who drove Petrino to that intersection.
Maybe his focus was legitimately on Petrino’s condition in the “approximately one minute” the trooper said he was at the intersection.
Yet, even the next day, on Monday after the Sunday wreck, King still wasn’t asking the logical question.
Acknowledging to the coach there had been reports of a passenger on Petrino’s motorcycle at the time of the wreck, King reported, “I didn’t ask him her name and he didn’t ask me to keep her name oft the report.”
By then, the crash investigation was clearly in other troopers’ hands - as it should have been - and this non-investigation of King’s role had begun.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 04/11/2012