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How anger cut down a big lineman
One-time North Allegheny star faces long list of charges for attack on IUP officer
Friday, November 17, 2000
By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
North Allegheny High School coach Jim Rankin quickly corrects a questioner.
"Willie Knapp wasn't a good football player," he said. "He was a great football player."
The Franklin Park resident was a both-ways, beefy lineman who could explode with speed and bench press 400 pounds. In 1997, the year Knapp graduated from North Allegheny, he was tagged as one of Pennsylvania's best, playing in the Big 33 Football Classic. He rated honorable mention on USA Today's All-USA team and was picked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Fabulous 22 regional all-star team.
"There was nothing that Willie couldn't do in football," Rankin said early this month. "He was very strong, very explosive."
But Knapp's most explosive performance came not quite two months ago, two years after he played his last down of college football, during a late-morning traffic stop on an Indiana, Pa., street that squeezes through the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus.
The yellow Volvo that Knapp was driving caught a campus police officer's attention when it made an illegal left turn, police say. When Sgt. Gregory Davis got out of his cruiser, approached Knapp's car and, for openers, told Knapp that he should be wearing his seat belt, Knapp shot back: "I'm not ...10 years old. ... I won't be told when to wear my seat belt."
In moments, police say, a raging, cursing Knapp was out of his car, headed toward Davis.
Knapp ignored Davis' warnings to stay back and kept coming through a blast of pepper spray, a police report says.
And suddenly, by police accounts, there was 6 feet, 310 pounds of Willie Knapp atop Davis, straddling the unarmed police officer, choking him with both hands and screaming, "I'm going to kill you."
It took two other officers to break the hold, pull Knapp away and handcuff him. Knapp, who told a district justice that he had no criminal record and no previous drug or alcohol involvement, wound up facing a stiff list of charges topped by attempted homicide and aggravated assault.
The news was a perplexing twist, Rankin said.
On Oct. 27, the case twisted anew.
IUP police filed additional charges, saying that the day Knapp was arrested, he was packing banned anabolic steroids, drugs sometimes used by bodybuilders to gain muscle mass and stamina -- drugs that researchers say can rocket users into rage. Among the drugs taken from the Volvo was a container labeled "Finaplix-H, implant for feedlot heifers," police say.
"These are substances that could cause heart or liver damage ... or cancer," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University and an expert on anabolic steroids. "And they can make you mad. They can cause uncontrolled aggression."
Indeed, campus police are considering whether Knapp's eruption was powered by steroids.
"With steroids, there's a tendency to just snap," campus police Sgt. Leonard Jendrejeski said. "It could have just been the traffic citation that caused it. It could have been all the things totaled together."
Three years ago, though, Knapp was making his name purely in the sports pages.
He had gone off to the University of Rhode Island, slightly disappointed that he'd be playing football for a Division I-AA school instead of going to the top-rung I-A.
Knapp was a starter his freshman year -- "an aggressive kid, to an extreme," said assistant coach Carnelius Cruz, one of the few holdovers from the 1997 coaching staff.
"The problem was that he didn't know how to turn off the aggression when he was off the field," Cruz said. "I know as a player, I learned how to turn it off away from the field. He couldn't. ... He got into fights with a couple of guys off campus."
Drug testing there showed no steroid use, Cruz said.
But after his sophomore year at Rhode Island, Knapp packed up, left and made a failed walk-on attempt at the University of Pittsburgh. He transferred to IUP two years ago, to a school that had tried to recruit him out of North Allegheny in 1997. But the side trip to Pitt would cost Knapp; under NCAA rules, it meant he would have to sit out a year before playing at IUP.
So, Knapp showed up at IUP's spring drills in 1999 and promptly left.
"He was in no condition to play football. He came in well over 300 pounds," IUP head coach Frank Cignetti said. "So, he figured, 'Why go through this if I can't play football this fall?' He packed it in. That was the end."
"He pulled his gear, then turned it in the next day," said Tom Rogish, assistant head coach.
Knapp stayed at school, though, his major undecided, taking classes through the end of summer term in August and working as a bouncer at the Coney Island, a downtown bar and restaurant.
"He's the kind of guy I wouldn't mind having as a bouncer," Jendrejeski said. "When he's in the doorway, the doorway's full."
And then, came a traffic stop Sept. 12.
Defense lawyer Thomas Ceraso of Greensburg will say little about the case yet but says he'll contest details of the attack at a preliminary hearing Nov. 30.
According to charges filed by IUP police Cpl. Rebecca Leeper, Knapp's confrontation with Davis began in earnest when, moments after the traffic stop, Davis said Knapp would be cited.
"Why don't you get a real job, you ...?" the criminal complaint quotes Knapp as saying. "Why don't you take off that badge and we'll settle it right here? ... I'm going to kick your ass. ... Take your uniform off and we can settle this right now."
As Knapp walked toward him and got within seven to 10 feet -- growing "louder, more vulgar," the complaint says -- Davis warned him to back off. At four to five feet, Davis, carrying only a collapsible nightstick and pepper spray, let loose with a 3-second blast of spray, police say.
"That [spray] was a triggering factor," Knapp said during an interview Nov. 2 in which he said he couldn't talk about most of the details.
Police say Knapp hit Davis in the face, knocked him down, jumped on him, then grabbed Davis with a two-handed choke hold that kept the policeman from breathing.
Davis, bruised, cut and swollen, was able to return to work. Knapp wound up in Indiana County Jail without bail, then was released three weeks later, when President Judge William Martin set bail at $150,000 and let Knapp go home to Franklin Park, where he is under electronically monitored house arrest. He also is under orders to get outpatient treatment for drug abuse and take anger management classes.
The second part of the case -- the drug connection -- wasn't added until Oct. 27, when state police chemists finished analyzing pills and liquids taken from bottles and hypodermic needles found in a duffel bag in Knapp's car.
The criminal complaint lists the drugs as trenbolone acetate, testosterone propionate, methandrostenolone and oxymetholone. All are anabolic steroids, in the same restricted category with some barbiturates and considered by the federal government to have potential for abuse, a risk of low to moderate physical dependence and a chance for high psychological dependence.
Jendrejeski says police didn't test Knapp to see if had taken the drugs. Knapp won't discuss them. Ceraso won't say if his defense might weave in the drugs as the explosive that ignited the attack.
"These drugs don't take a mild-mannered person and turn him into a raging monster. They don't turn Clark Kent into a bull," Goldberg said. "But pretty aggressive people can get out of control when they use them. And what happened here was aggressive, a person exhibiting an alpha male response on an unarmed officer ... choking him. ... It doesn't make a lot of sense."
Not to anybody.
Back at North Allegheny, Rankin is nothing but subdued as he hashes through the details.
"It's a sad thing. I feel sorry for the police officer. I feel sorry for Willie Knapp," he said. "I think that, somewhere, Willie just lost his vision of what he wanted to do. Football was a large part of what he wanted to do."
How anger cut down a big lineman
One-time North Allegheny star faces long list of charges for attack on IUP officer
Friday, November 17, 2000
By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
North Allegheny High School coach Jim Rankin quickly corrects a questioner.
"Willie Knapp wasn't a good football player," he said. "He was a great football player."
The Franklin Park resident was a both-ways, beefy lineman who could explode with speed and bench press 400 pounds. In 1997, the year Knapp graduated from North Allegheny, he was tagged as one of Pennsylvania's best, playing in the Big 33 Football Classic. He rated honorable mention on USA Today's All-USA team and was picked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Fabulous 22 regional all-star team.
"There was nothing that Willie couldn't do in football," Rankin said early this month. "He was very strong, very explosive."
But Knapp's most explosive performance came not quite two months ago, two years after he played his last down of college football, during a late-morning traffic stop on an Indiana, Pa., street that squeezes through the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus.
The yellow Volvo that Knapp was driving caught a campus police officer's attention when it made an illegal left turn, police say. When Sgt. Gregory Davis got out of his cruiser, approached Knapp's car and, for openers, told Knapp that he should be wearing his seat belt, Knapp shot back: "I'm not ...10 years old. ... I won't be told when to wear my seat belt."
In moments, police say, a raging, cursing Knapp was out of his car, headed toward Davis.
Knapp ignored Davis' warnings to stay back and kept coming through a blast of pepper spray, a police report says.
And suddenly, by police accounts, there was 6 feet, 310 pounds of Willie Knapp atop Davis, straddling the unarmed police officer, choking him with both hands and screaming, "I'm going to kill you."
It took two other officers to break the hold, pull Knapp away and handcuff him. Knapp, who told a district justice that he had no criminal record and no previous drug or alcohol involvement, wound up facing a stiff list of charges topped by attempted homicide and aggravated assault.
The news was a perplexing twist, Rankin said.
On Oct. 27, the case twisted anew.
IUP police filed additional charges, saying that the day Knapp was arrested, he was packing banned anabolic steroids, drugs sometimes used by bodybuilders to gain muscle mass and stamina -- drugs that researchers say can rocket users into rage. Among the drugs taken from the Volvo was a container labeled "Finaplix-H, implant for feedlot heifers," police say.
"These are substances that could cause heart or liver damage ... or cancer," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University and an expert on anabolic steroids. "And they can make you mad. They can cause uncontrolled aggression."
Indeed, campus police are considering whether Knapp's eruption was powered by steroids.
"With steroids, there's a tendency to just snap," campus police Sgt. Leonard Jendrejeski said. "It could have just been the traffic citation that caused it. It could have been all the things totaled together."
Three years ago, though, Knapp was making his name purely in the sports pages.
He had gone off to the University of Rhode Island, slightly disappointed that he'd be playing football for a Division I-AA school instead of going to the top-rung I-A.
Knapp was a starter his freshman year -- "an aggressive kid, to an extreme," said assistant coach Carnelius Cruz, one of the few holdovers from the 1997 coaching staff.
"The problem was that he didn't know how to turn off the aggression when he was off the field," Cruz said. "I know as a player, I learned how to turn it off away from the field. He couldn't. ... He got into fights with a couple of guys off campus."
Drug testing there showed no steroid use, Cruz said.
But after his sophomore year at Rhode Island, Knapp packed up, left and made a failed walk-on attempt at the University of Pittsburgh. He transferred to IUP two years ago, to a school that had tried to recruit him out of North Allegheny in 1997. But the side trip to Pitt would cost Knapp; under NCAA rules, it meant he would have to sit out a year before playing at IUP.
So, Knapp showed up at IUP's spring drills in 1999 and promptly left.
"He was in no condition to play football. He came in well over 300 pounds," IUP head coach Frank Cignetti said. "So, he figured, 'Why go through this if I can't play football this fall?' He packed it in. That was the end."
"He pulled his gear, then turned it in the next day," said Tom Rogish, assistant head coach.
Knapp stayed at school, though, his major undecided, taking classes through the end of summer term in August and working as a bouncer at the Coney Island, a downtown bar and restaurant.
"He's the kind of guy I wouldn't mind having as a bouncer," Jendrejeski said. "When he's in the doorway, the doorway's full."
And then, came a traffic stop Sept. 12.
Defense lawyer Thomas Ceraso of Greensburg will say little about the case yet but says he'll contest details of the attack at a preliminary hearing Nov. 30.
According to charges filed by IUP police Cpl. Rebecca Leeper, Knapp's confrontation with Davis began in earnest when, moments after the traffic stop, Davis said Knapp would be cited.
"Why don't you get a real job, you ...?" the criminal complaint quotes Knapp as saying. "Why don't you take off that badge and we'll settle it right here? ... I'm going to kick your ass. ... Take your uniform off and we can settle this right now."
As Knapp walked toward him and got within seven to 10 feet -- growing "louder, more vulgar," the complaint says -- Davis warned him to back off. At four to five feet, Davis, carrying only a collapsible nightstick and pepper spray, let loose with a 3-second blast of spray, police say.
"That [spray] was a triggering factor," Knapp said during an interview Nov. 2 in which he said he couldn't talk about most of the details.
Police say Knapp hit Davis in the face, knocked him down, jumped on him, then grabbed Davis with a two-handed choke hold that kept the policeman from breathing.
Davis, bruised, cut and swollen, was able to return to work. Knapp wound up in Indiana County Jail without bail, then was released three weeks later, when President Judge William Martin set bail at $150,000 and let Knapp go home to Franklin Park, where he is under electronically monitored house arrest. He also is under orders to get outpatient treatment for drug abuse and take anger management classes.
The second part of the case -- the drug connection -- wasn't added until Oct. 27, when state police chemists finished analyzing pills and liquids taken from bottles and hypodermic needles found in a duffel bag in Knapp's car.
The criminal complaint lists the drugs as trenbolone acetate, testosterone propionate, methandrostenolone and oxymetholone. All are anabolic steroids, in the same restricted category with some barbiturates and considered by the federal government to have potential for abuse, a risk of low to moderate physical dependence and a chance for high psychological dependence.
Jendrejeski says police didn't test Knapp to see if had taken the drugs. Knapp won't discuss them. Ceraso won't say if his defense might weave in the drugs as the explosive that ignited the attack.
"These drugs don't take a mild-mannered person and turn him into a raging monster. They don't turn Clark Kent into a bull," Goldberg said. "But pretty aggressive people can get out of control when they use them. And what happened here was aggressive, a person exhibiting an alpha male response on an unarmed officer ... choking him. ... It doesn't make a lot of sense."
Not to anybody.
Back at North Allegheny, Rankin is nothing but subdued as he hashes through the details.
"It's a sad thing. I feel sorry for the police officer. I feel sorry for Willie Knapp," he said. "I think that, somewhere, Willie just lost his vision of what he wanted to do. Football was a large part of what he wanted to do."
I actually feel bad for Knapp.
