Rashee Rice was lucky. No one got killed. The drivers in his wake were lucky, too, as much as they might not think so. As terrifying as it must have been to lose control of your vehicle at 60 or 70 mph in a concrete valley, wondering in those suspended seconds what in the world has happened and how it will end, it could have been much worse. Should have been, in fact.
Because when someone slams into cars at 119 mph or 91 or whatever it was on Central Expressway, spinning it into a maelstrom, as per the arrest-warrant affidavit, you should expect the worst.
You should expect something along the lines of what happened in the early hours of Jan. 14, 2003, when Dwayne Goodrich left a strip club on Mockingbird a little after 2 and turned north on I-35.
Witnesses told police the silver 2002 BMW 745i was doing 100 or more when Goodrich, a 24-year-old Cowboys cornerback, veered left to avoid the braking of a Nissan Pathfinder he’d been tailgating. The driver of the Pathfinder had slowed because of an accident that left a car burning in the left lane. Three Good Samaritans had stopped to try to free the unconscious driver.
Former Cowboy Dwayne Goodrich served six years in prison for a hit-and-run accident that left two men dead.
An expert testified Goodrich, attempting to squeeze between the wreckage and the concrete divider, was driving 54 mph when he hit two of the Samaritans so hard it knocked them out of their clothing. One died at the scene, the other at Parkland. The third Samaritan suffered a leg injury requiring multiple surgeries.
Goodrich testified that he never saw anything but a burning car. His only thought was to avoid hitting the wall. He said he never saw his victims. Thought he’d run over “debris.”
Never so much as tapped his brakes.
The next day, he was getting ready to turn himself in when cops came to his door. He was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to seven and a half years. Got another five for failure to stop and render aid.
Rice’s story is similar to Goodrich’s on several fronts. Both NFL players with Dallas ties: Goodrich, a Cowboy; Rice, an SMU ex who plays for the Chiefs. Both drove recklessly, irresponsibly. Both left the scene.
The difference, of course, was that no one died March 30. Nothing short of a miracle, too, considering Rice is accused of driving nearly twice as fast as Goodrich was.
The top end for Rice’s Lamborghini Urus is about 190 mph. In the upper left-hand corner of one online test video, a disclaimer notes the result was achieved on an open section of the German Autobahn and should not be attempted elsewhere.
There is no Autobahn in Texas, but drivers here make do. Only a week before Rice’s race, I was driving north on Central near NorthPark when traffic stopped. The reason came into view shortly: a half-dozen cars on both shoulders in various stages of damage. Two more cars in the middle of the freeway. Drivers on foot. A man with his hands on his head. A woman screaming into her phone.
Once clear of that debris field, I took the Royal exit only to see the reason for the wreckage on Central at the intersection ahead. The vehicle that had apparently set off the chain reaction had finally come to a stop in the door of a car that had been sitting at the light, its driver waiting on green.
Until some fool stopped everything.
When a car blows past you at 100 mph, shattering your fragile, futile sense of security, you wonder what’s going through the driver’s mind, if anything. Do they think they’re bulletproof? Do they care?
Does it really take a scene like the one above to make them understand the consequences?
Rice is accused of racing Central at 6:20 p.m., a time of day anyone could have been out. A kid just getting his permit. A senior whose reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Pretty much anyone unprepared to react quickly enough when someone’s roaring up on them at 119 mph.
Related:Flashback: Another Dallas Cowboy, Dwayne Goodrich, learns hard lesson
Or someone careening down a shoulder at even half that speed.
Dwayne Goodrich served eight years and was paroled in 2011. He has made good on his promise to tell his story. You can find him on the Texas Speakers Bureau website.
In a video from 2012, he tells a group about the night that wrecked his life and three others.
This time he doesn’t say he saw only a burning car in front of him.
He saw a life, all right.
His own.
“I left the scene because I panicked,” he told the group. “I left the scene because I saw everything that I’d worked for flash in front of my face, and I didn’t really want to deal with the consequences of what I did.”
Chances are even if Rashee Rice had known Goodrich’s story, his still would have played out the same. Few of us see our fate in others’ examples. Some lessons we have to learn on our own. Sometimes we’re not lucky.