Brother charged in NHL player’s death

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS

NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard had been out of drug rehab for just one day before his younger brother gave him an unprescribed narcotic pain pill at the start of an evening of night-clubbing, drug-taking and heavy drinking that resulted in his death, prosecutors alleged Friday.

A complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court said Aaron Boogaard, 24, told police he gave his brother a single oxycodone the night before he found Derek Boogaard dead in their Minneapolis apartment May 13. Derek Boogaard, 28, died of what authorities ruled was a toxic mix of alcohol and drugs.

The younger Boogaard was charged Friday with unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, a felony that also applies when narcotics are given away for free. He was also charged with interfering with the scene of a death for allegedly flushing the rest of his brother’s drug stash — a mix of oxycodone and related drugs — down the toilet before police arrived, the complaint alleged.

“This is a very tragic situation,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told reporters. “Most of us know someone who’s had problems, troubles with alcohol or drugs. And most of us know that a person, the day they get out of treatment, shouldn’t receive for any reason the drugs that put him in treatment in the first place.”

An attorney for Aaron Boogaard said the entire family had suffered a tremendous loss.

“We will address the allegations in court rather than in the media, but note that Aaron was and remains devastated by his brother’s death,” attorney John W. Lundquist said in a statement Friday.

Assuming Boogaard has no criminal record, the state’s sentencing guidelines would call for 21 months of probation and no prison time, said Chuck Laszewski, a spokesman for the county attorney’s office.

Freeman said Derek Boogaard got out of a New York rehab center just a day before he started using drugs again. He said Aaron Boogaard’s statements to police made it clear his brother did not take the pill to relieve pain, “but to prepare for a big night out,” and that Derek Boogaard had the narcotics shipped home illegally from New York, without a prescription.

“It’s our understanding that Aaron kept his brother’s non-prescribed illegal drugs and attempted to parcel them on some kind of limited basis,” Freeman said. “This was not the first time he had been in treatment. … And everyone around him should have known that you just simply can’t give this kind of drugs to a person who’s badly addicted.”