To this day, nothing about the death of Justin Strzelczyk makes sense. Not the high-speed police chase that covered 40 miles. Not the explosive collision with a tanker that killed him, 400 miles from his home and traveling on the wrong side of the highway. And certainly not the toxicology report that revealed no drugs or alcohol in his bloodstream.
Seven weeks after Strzelczyk, a former offensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, died on the New York State Thruway at 36, the days leading up to his death remain filled with questions that his family, friends and ex-wife cannot answer. They still do not know whether his death was triggered by a mental disorder or whether, perhaps, past steroid use could have been partly to blame, or whether he simply found life without football to be an impossible task.
Firemen douse the Sept. 30 crash that killed Justin Strzelczyk after he led police on a long chase that neared 90 mph. He was thrown 80 yards from his pickup upon impact with a tanker truck.
(Patrick Palladino -- Utica Observer-dispatch Via AP)
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"Somebody asked me what I thought his legacy was, and I think it was the fact that he lived strong," said Jim Doran, a family practitioner who has been a friend since college. "Every day he lived life to its fullest. He had a lot of interests besides being a football player, but that's what he wanted to be. He got there with hard work and nose to the grindstone, no shortcuts when he played.
"He fulfilled his dream so early in his life, and some people never do. He hit his high point, and when that ended, maybe that's when things started going bad."
Strzelczyk was four years removed from the NFL, a player respected by coaches and teammates because he could play every position on the offensive line. A native of the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca, N.Y., he favored faded jeans and flannel shirts and liked to ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He taught himself to play the banjo and the guitar, and was a devoted father to Justin, 10, and Sabrina, 8.
In the last year of his life, he opened a garage and custom hubcap business not far from his house in a Pittsburgh suburb. His hubcap designs included a model that read "trust your instincts," one of his favorite sayings, according to friends. He had a reputation for being a free spirit, friends said, and for having a longtime marijuana habit. He liked to party, eat and drink, often to excess, they said. But friends said nothing about this behavior would portend his death.
When he died, Strzelczyk was on a journey with an unknown destination. The last 40 miles, his Ford pickup truck was followed by a New York state trooper in a pursuit that approached 90 mph. For the last four miles, Strzelczyk was driving into oncoming traffic, one of the tires of his pickup already punctured by police.
He was unable to swerve out of the path of a slow-moving tanker truck that earlier had dumped a load of hazardous corrosives. Strzelczyk's body was thrown 80 yards as the collision ignited the fuel in both vehicles, sending great clouds of black smoke billowing into the air. The driver of the tanker truck miraculously escaped unharmed.
The toxicology report showed no drugs or alcohol in Strzelczyk's system, and police are reluctant to call his death a suicide based on interviews with family and friends. The New York state police, like most jurisdictions, do not test for anabolic steroids, which can lead to aggressiveness or behavioral and psychiatric disorders. Strzelczyk told friends he had used anabolic steroids for 10 months in 2002, but stopped. Seven months earlier, he apparently had stopped drinking and smoking marijuana, according to his friends and his ex-wife, Keana.
"It appears he was suffering from some kind of mental psychosis," said Donald Faughman, the state police captain who supervised the crash investigation.
Disturbing Details
Family and friends say they knew something was wrong for weeks, maybe longer, before Strzelczyk's death.
"When I look back at the last couple of years, things weren't really right with him," said his sister, Melissa, who lives in the Pittsburgh area. "I noticed that it was hard to have a conversation with him. He'd get on one subject and wouldn't let up. Then he'd go to another one, and the same thing. I think it got really out of control the last two weeks."
Doran, who practices medicine in Pittsburgh, had known Strzelczyk since their days as bartenders during college, when Strzelczyk acquired the nickname "Jugs" after a particularly bad haircut made him resemble the cartoon character Jughead. The day before Strzelczyk's final journey, they had spoken on the telephone, then met. Doran, who had returned from a 10-day trip, had become alarmed at his friend's incoherence. He convinced Strzelczyk to meet him in front of the Duquesne University chapel.
"He had been acting a little strange before I'd left," Doran said, "but nothing that would worry you. That was him, that was Jugs. He was always excited about new things, new realizations. But when I got back, his [former] wife called me and said he was really starting to act differently. When I called him that day, he was talking about God, he was all over the place, very excited, very exuberant, speaking so fast I could hardly understand him.
