Posted on 12/12/2004 11:10:39 AM PST by Ellesu
OSU player in court as soldier fights in Iraq Sunday, December 12, 2004 CORVALLIS O n Thursday, Gabriel Sapp couldn't attend the arraignment of the Oregon State football player who, according to police reports, knocked him unconscious early the morning of Nov. 12.
Sapp was busy 7,000 miles away, leading an infantry squad at dusty Camp Taji, a dangerous outpost in the Sunni Triangle, northwest of Baghdad.
But in Courtroom 1 of the Benton County Courthouse, six comrades-in-arms showed to witness the arraignment of Joe Rudulph, the defensive end charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and two counts of assault.
"We are here to stand up for Gabe because he can't be here," said one of the soldiers, Sgt. 1st Class Phillip Jacques. "He is off in Iraq fighting for our freedom."
Rudulph, 20, a redshirt freshman from Sacramento, is the only player charged, but he was not alone as night turned to morning.
Around 12:30 a.m., Rudulph walked into The Headline Cafe with four teammates: receiver Anthony Wheat-Brown, Whitfield Usher, a 342-pound guard; Ryan Rainwater, a 287-pound lineman; and Carl Appleton, a 231-pound tight end who played at Portland's Central Catholic High School. The players had been drinking and were out late despite an important game at Stanford in about 36 hours.
Before the night was done, Wheat-Brown would, according to witnesses, incite an ugly confrontation that landed his teammate in jail and left a soldier unconscious and bleeding from his mouth and the back of his head.
Court documents and police interviews with players, victims and witnesses give this picture of what happened:
The trouble began on the dance floor. Sapp, 26, who was to return to Iraq in two days, had taken his wife, Soliana, out dancing. The couple -- Sapp is white, his wife is African American -- were together on the jammed dance floor when Wheat-Brown approached. The football player came up behind Soliana Sapp and began dancing with her.
Sapp pulled Soliana closer and told Wheat-Brown, who is African American, that Soliana was his wife.
In an interview with police, Soliana Sapp said: "Wheat-Brown started yelling at Gabriel, telling him to get off of him 'because you don't know who I am.' "
B ut we know who he is. Wheat-Brown is the redshirt freshman from Compton, Calif., who drops passes on Saturdays and dropped shame on his team that November night.
Later, when the restaurant closed, a rowdy, inebriated crowd lingered outside. Soliana Sapp and her husband's sister, Emily, then stuck their noses where they didn't belong. They saw Rudulph arguing with his girlfriend and confronted the Oregon State player, telling him to leave the woman alone.
The argument escalated when Shane Ward, a friend of Sapp's also on leave from the Middle East, approached.
Ward told the players he and Sapp were soldiers. The athletes ridiculed Ward for his military service.
Soliana Sapp later told police that people in the players' group said offensive things about the United States and questioned why anyone would ever fight for it.
Ward got angry and pulled up his shirt to show a scar on his back. It is a miracle Ward still was alive. He was wounded in June while racing to the aid of another Bravo Company Humvee blown up by a buried roadside bomb. Spc. Eric McKinley, 24, of Corvallis was killed in the initial blast. Ward's Humvee was destroyed by a second 150-mm bomb, which has a kill radius of 100 meters. Ward was 15 meters away, and the explosion knifed a piece of shrapnel into his back, cleaving his right scapula. His comrades at Camp Taji are saving a piece of his scapula for him as a souvenir.
On this night, when Ward showed the football players his scar, according to Soliana Sapp, one said, "I'll give you a hole bigger than that to remember us by."
As things do when booze is involved, the argument careened out of control. The players grew agitated after, they said, someone in the crowd made a comment comparing them to animals.
Soliana Sapp said the players taunted her for being with a white man, and that most of the comments came out of Wheat-Brown's mouth.
As his wife and sister argued with the players, Gabriel Sapp stepped forward.
The 6-foot-5, 234-pound Rudulph told police he felt in danger. When someone grabbed his shirt, he turned and lashed out. The former high school pitcher took a crow hop and slugged the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Sapp in the head with his left hand. Sapp never saw the punch coming; he was unconscious before he hit the pavement. His wife also was knocked down in the melee.
Later at jail, Rudulph's blood alcohol level was measured at .11, above the legal limit for driving (.08). When asked how the underage players got into The Headline Cafe, he said, "Being an OSU football player is a privilege in this city."
Rudulph doesn't grasp the depth of his privilege or the debt he owes to soldiers such as Staff Sgt. Gabriel Sapp of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry Regiment.
Coach Mike Riley suspended Rudulph and the other players indefinitely. But the arrogance and sense of entitlement that peek through the court documents are serious problems Riley must deal with aggressively. Who do these guys think they are? They play football, big deal. It pales beside what soldiers are doing at Camp Taji.
These players have a lot to answer for before they are allowed to suit up for Oregon State again. They disgraced themselves, their team and their university.
After the hearing, Jacques reflected on the past year, a bloody time that saw four soldiers in Bravo Company die in combat. He limped down the courthouse stairs, his right leg still stiff from wounds suffered when his Humvee was blown up July 28.
"In the past year, Gabe Sapp has been shot at, mortared and has had bombs exploded at him," Jacques said. "And the most serious wound he has suffered happens when he comes home and is sucker-punched by an Oregon State football player. That really makes me angry."
Me too, sergeant, me too.
Nothing like the gimme-it-all-I'm-an-athlete Bee-ess!
They really ought to do less 'roid.
I believe that some of these guys even the uncharged need a little nonstate sanctioned awakening.
They should all be made to apologize at the very least . . . in person . . . in the middle of a fire-fight. Then, perhaps, they'll understand the difference between them and REAL men.
It's unbelievable what's happened to guys like Gabriel Sapp and Foster Barton who're serving their country. As for football player, he's going to a state university. Does that mean he's receiving a athletic scholarship? If he is, that needs to be revoked, immediately.
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