Tragedy of the NFL’s ‘teddy bear’ shot by terrified policeman

It doesn’t make any sense, this former All-Pro NFL player lying in critical condition in a Miami hospital – this “good guy” this “big teddy bear of a man” shot by a terrified policeman.

It doesn’t make any sense that Barret Robbins, who had so much as an athlete when he was a member of the Oakland Raiders, would be found cowering in a women’s toilet in a pub and now, even while fighting for his life, be charged with the attempted murder of three police officers.

Then, knowing Robbins’ struggle against bipolar disease – also known as manic-depression – the way he disappeared before the biggest game of his life, the demons he’s had to fight, it makes all the sense in the world.

“It’s a wicked illness,” said psychologist Richard Lustberg, about bipolar . “More wicked than you could imagine.” And while there is medication, there is no cure.

The world goes on, and we ignore the pain that afflicts so many. Until it’s someone who is recognised, an athlete, an entertainer, someone about whom we say “how could that happen to him?”

But studying Robbins’ past the signs were there. “Episodes” is the term when the disease manifests itself, when the person acts strangely, even violently.

Robbins, 31, suffers from bipolar disorder and alcoholism, a not unusual combination say medical experts who explain those with the disease also frequently have problems with substance abuse. He had drinking troubles in high school in Texas, although not severe enough for anyone to notice. Besides, as his football coach in Houston said: “He was as good a kid as a I had, and I don’t just mean as an athlete.”

A star at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Robbins, who was well over 300 pounds – the Raider media guide listed him at 315, but he was probably 340 and recently had ballooned up to maybe 370 – was taken in the second round of the 1995 draft.

He was a centre, who snaps the ball to the quarterback and who blocks, a centre picked for the Pro Bowl.

In 1996, he missed a couple of games and spent five days in hospital, diagnosed with depression. A year later he admitted both parents had the same disorder, and he himself had an episode in his last year, 1994, at TCU. But with the medication things worked out.

Until two years ago, January 2003. Until the week the Raiders were to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl XXXVII at San Diego.

There had been a knee injury and surgery, and Robbins later said he was “scared”. The night before the game Robbins was not in the hotel. He would be found drunk and incoherent across the border in Tijuana, Mexico and was sent home before the game. Whether that made a difference is hard to say, but the Raiders were whipped, 48-21, and his team-mates were livid.

Until, that is, they learned Robbins was bipolar. Until they found out he had not taken his medication. Then the anger turned to pity. He was a sick man, they understood, not responsible for his actions. Robbins spent a month in the Betty Ford Clinic, quit drinking and returned for the 2003 season.

But he lost his starting position, then was caught using the designer steroid THG and fined. Last summer Robbins was released but occasionally could be found in the Raiders’ stadium parking lot at a pre-game party.

What he was doing across the country in Florida, 2,800 miles away, no-one is certain. He had become estranged from his wife, Marisa, and their two children. And only on Christmas Eve, Robbins had been involved in an incident at a San Francisco hotel, arrested for battery and public drunkenness after an arg ument with a security guard.

“People with this condition do not have control of their behaviour at times,” said Lustberg, the psychologist.

There is a chemical imbalance in the brain. “A battle within your head,” Robbins explained once.

The Miami Beach police report said Robbins allegedly went for the gun of detective Mike Muley, who shot Robbins twice before Robbins knocked out Muley. Marisa Robbins said one bullet pierced his heart, another punctured a lung.

Robbins’ former agent, Drew Pittman, isn’t sure Robbins even knew what he was doing. “He would say, ‘ I can do it on my own. I don’t need medication’,” Pittman said. “You can’t blame a person whose brain isn’t working .”

The Miami Beach police said they didn’t know about the illness, but they were trying to subdue a huge man who “growled and snorted and was laughing during the attack”.

When Robbins was cut loose from the Raiders in August, he told a reporter. “It’s a good thing. For me, it’s not about football, it’s about life.”

The words have come to be terribly prophetic.

23 January 2005