In court, UGA casts blame to others for fatal crash

“Ms. Bowles made the fateful choice to get in a rented Ford Expedition with an intoxicated Ms. LeCroy behind the wheel,” the athletic association’s attorney, Scott Bailey, wrote.

A question at the heart of the legal fight: Is the university’s athletic association to blame for the injuries and death caused by a football staff employee driving recklessly and harming others in a vehicle rented by UGA?

Bowles’ lawsuit, filed in July, claims the athletic association was aware of LeCroy’s history of speeding and alleges the program had permitted personal use of the rented vehicles by football recruiting staff in the past.

UGA in previous public statements has said LeCroy was not authorized to use the black Ford Expedition that night and should have known to return the vehicle following the end of her recruiting duties that day.

The association’s filing last Friday in state court in Gwinnett County acknowledged it had, in the past, allowed staff to take vehicles rented for recruiting purposes home “solely as a convenience.” Still, the association’s court filing says LeCroy was not permitted to drive the rented SUV out for “a night of drinking and partying.” The filing says Bowles and LeCroy had been at four different bars that night in downtown Athens.

“UGAAA never implied or suggested that analysts could use the rental vehicles for purely personal activities, and it has absolutely never granted permission for analysts to drunkenly drive the vehicles or to race at unsafe speeds through city streets,” the court filing reads.

Bowles’ attorneys, Rob Buck and Phil Boston, declined to comment. In her lawsuit, Bowles’ attorneys say that she did not know LeCroy was legally intoxicated. The suit says she did not spend much time with LeCroy inside an Athens strip club, Toppers International Showbar, where she and others with the football program visited at the end of a long day of celebration of the team’s second consecutive national championship. They left the bar around 2:30 a.m. The crash occurred approximately 15 minutes later.

Her lawsuit includes texts from earlier recruiting weekends in which Bowles and other recruiters were told by supervisors that they could keep rented vehicles overnight.

And in an attempt to show that personal use of the rented SUV’s were allowed, the lawsuit also detailed an unofficial recruiting dinner earlier the night of the crash in which LeCroy and Bowles drove the SUV for a “presumably” personal errand for an assistant coach.

At a dinner attended by recruits and their families the night of the crash, assistant football coach Chidera Uzo-Diribe asked Bowles to use his ATM card to bring him $1,000 in cash before the dinner was over, the lawsuit said. After the card was first denied at a nearby convenience store, Bowles and LeCroy went in a rented SUV to another ATM and then to Bowles’ home to acquire the cash. Uzo-Diribe repaid Bowles the $1,000 through the payment processing app Venmo.

The association agrees that Uzo-Diribe’s request was a personal errand, but disputes that the coach asked Bowles to use her rented SUV to acquire the cash. The athletic association has never offered a detailed explanation of why the coach was taking out $1,000 in personal cash during an dinner with recruits.

“We don’t dispute that the money was for the Coach’s personal use,” the athletic association said in a statement. “What we dispute is that the Coach requested that Ms. Bowles use the rented SUV to get the cash or in any event the implication that use of the SUV for personal activities was authorized.”

Later that night, after leaving the strip club, Bowles passed up an opportunity to get out of the black SUV driven by LeCroy, UGA’s lawyer says in its filing.

Shortly before the wreck, LeCroy and former defensive star Jalen Carter, who was driving a separate vehicle, briefly stopped at a Waffle House on Oconee Street before the group decided to drive to the restaurant chain’s Barnett Shoals Road location, police records show. Cameras along the route captured LeCroy and Carter weaving through traffic at high speeds prior to the stop.

Despite this dangerous driving, Bowles did not get out of the car when the group stopped at the first Waffle House, the association claims in the filing.

“Ms. Bowles saw and experienced the illegal and reckless driving of Ms. LeCroy while she followed Mr. Carter out of Athens. Ms. Bowles chose to stay in the Expedition, despite a clear opportunity not to do so,” the legal filing reads.

The lawsuit also names LeCroy’s estate and Carter, alleging they were liable for the crash. Carter was arrested in March and charged with reckless driving and street racing after an Athens-Clarke police investigation found the former UGA star was racing with LeCroy at roughly 100 mph moments before the crash. He pleaded no contest to the charges and was later drafted in the first round by the Philadelphia Eagles. Bowles’

In a separate legal filing, Carter’s attorneys denied that he was racing LeCroy and said Bowles “voluntarily assumed the risk of harm” by riding in the car with LeCroy. His lawyers in response to Bowles lawsuit says Carter has no responsibility for the crash.

The athletic association is also facing a lawsuit filed by the Willock family, who claim that UGA is liable for the crash. In a past public statement, the association has said the claims were “baseless” and “without merit.”

UGA fired Bowles from her recruiting analyst position in August, a move her attorneys said was retaliation for filing her lawsuit.

Central to UGA’s reason for her firing was her unwillingness to submit to interviews for an internal investigation related to the crash as well as an athletic association review of what UGA officials say is a potential NCAA violation mentioned in her lawsuit, according documents obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.