‘Pacman’ booked at LV jail
While NFL standout Adam "Pacman" Jones walked in and out of the Clark County Detention Center in about two hours early Friday morning, Tom Urbanski remained wheelchair bound in a Colorado rehabilitation center not knowing whether he would ever use his legs again.
Urbanski’s plight has been lost in the media hoopla over the alleged criminal exploits of the Tennessee Titan cornerback, said Urbanski’s wife, Kathy.
"I think I’m angrier than Tommy," she said by phone from the valley school where she teaches. "I watch what he has to go through and how he suffers. I have visions of the bullet passing through him and how he felt laying in a pool of blood."
Las Vegas police and Clark County prosecutors have accused Jones and two companions of attacking and threatening employees inside the Minxx strip club shortly before someone opened fire outside the club and wounded three people, including Urbanski. Jones surrendered and posted $20,000 bail on felony charges related to the strip club melee that preceded the triple shooting during NBA All-Star Weekend.
Urbanski, who was arriving to work a shift as a bouncer at the time of the Feb. 19 shooting, is paralyzed from the waist down. He will undergo another surgery on Friday; Kathy Urbanski has lost count of how many that is.
Recently, the skin on the back of his legs began peeling off because there isn’t enough blood flow due to the injuries, she said.
And never mind the medical bills, she said. "I don’t even open the envelopes."
"I am getting angrier and angrier every day," she said.
Meanwhile, one of Jones’ lawyers complained Friday that the football star’s case was unfairly handled by police.
"They gave us a one-day notice to get people cross-country on warrants that weren’t even issued yet," attorney Manny Arora said.
Arora said that a criminal complaint wasn’t filed until Thursday and that defense lawyers had to prod authorities to file an arrest warrant so Jones could turn himself in early Friday morning.
Clark County District Attorney David Roger was unavailable for comment. But an aide said the criminal complaint was submitted to Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday and the warrants were issued after 3 p.m. Thursday.
Jones’ Las Vegas lawyer, Robert Langford, said Jones was processed courteously at the Clark County jail.
Capt. Herb Baker of the Metropolitan Police Department’s detention division said Jones received no unusual treatment.
Jones was booked into jail at 1:20 a.m. and released at 3:35 a.m., Baker said.
Anybody with an outstanding warrant can turn themselves in at any time. "In most high-profile cases they (the defense lawyers) plan it that way" to avoid public scrutiny, Baker said.
Jones was handcuffed, fingerprinted, photographed, checked for warrants, and examined by medical personnel. Baker wasn’t present, but said it would have been standard procedure for Jones to be kept in a separate cell during the booking process to prevent another inmate from trying to make a name for himself by attacking the professional football player.
A jail booking photo showed Jones had cut his hair, shedding his dreadlocks.
After being released, Jones immediately flew back to Nashville, Tenn. He is scheduled to return for an initial court appearance July 23.
The arrest in Las Vegas was the sixth for Jones since he was drafted into the NFL in 2005. He has not been convicted of any crimes, but authorities say he has been involved in at least 11 police investigations around the country and is wanted for questioning in an Atlanta-area strip club shooting that occurred on Monday.
Jones was suspended by the NFL for the upcoming season because of his many run-ins with the law.
Jones will plead not guilty to two felony charges of coercion stemming from allegations that he threatened to kill Minxx club employees and that he bit a bar bouncer, his lawyers said.
If convicted, the 23-year-old faces a maximum of 12 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Langford also represents two people that police say were in Jones’ entourage at Minxx and who face felony charges related to the incident.
Sadia Morrison, 25, of New York, was arrested after the pre-dawn fracas. She faces five charges, including coercion, felony assault with a deadly weapon and battery. She was accused of hitting a bouncer in the head with a champagne bottle and attacking several other club employees with a chair and a stanchion.
Morrison was given a summons to appear in a Las Vegas court July 19.
Langford said Robert "Big Rob" Reid, who police have described as Jones’ bodyguard, was trying to get to Las Vegas to turn himself in. He had not done so late Friday.
"When it comes to it, they’ll plead not guilty," Langford said of Morrison and Reid.
Reid, 37, of Compton, Calif., faces one felony coercion charge alleging he attacked a bouncer who tried to restrain Jones.
A suspect in the shooting has not been charged or identified by police. Authorities have released an image captured by surveillance cameras of a "person of interest" in the case.
Police reports place Jones with a man dressed like the shooter and with a man who a club waitress said threatened to "smoke" people outside the club.
Meanwhile, Kathy Urbanski is keeping up with the stem cell research debate and President Bush’s latest veto of research funding. "I bet President Bush would feel different if he was in a wheelchair," she said.
"It’s extremely frustrating," she said, because she believes stem cells might hold the only chance her husband has of walking again.
Kathy Urbanski said she was glad that police had made some progress, "but until that shooter is put away forever, we won’t have any vindication."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
