Police Reports Detail Blades Family Nightmare Friends, Family Members Quoted In Report Implicating Brian Blades

A cousin of Seattle Seahawks receiver Brian Blades died of a gunshot wound to the head, apparently in a tussle as he tried to keep a drunken Blades from getting the gun, according to friends’ and family members’ accounts.

The accounts were released Thursday in advance of Blades’ April 29 manslaughter trial and were reported Friday by the Miami Herald.

The shooting of Charles Blades occurred at Brian Blades’ home in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Plantation at the end of last year’s Fourth of July holiday.

According to Lorenzo Johnson, a friend of the Blades family, Charles Blades’ death marked the tragic end to a holiday that included heavy drinking at a family picnic, more drinking at two nightspots and in a rented limousine - then ended with an argument between Brian Blades and his younger brother, Detroit Lions safety Bennie Blades.

Less than 2 hours after heading out for the nightclubs, Brian and Bennie Blades, Charles Blades and two other friends - Johnson and Wilbur Peterson - headed back to the two brothers’ adjacent townhouses.

That was after Bennie Blades got a call from his girlfriend, Toni Fort, that Carol Jamerson - Bennie’s former girlfriend and mother of his 3-year-old daughter, Amber - had turned up at the Plantation townhouse and was refusing to leave.

Johnson described Brian Blades at that point as “drunk and about to fall off the seat” in the limo.

When Bennie Blades got out of the car to talk with Jamerson, his brother got out and followed.

According to Bennie Blades’ statement to Plantation police after the shooting: “My brother told me, ‘Look, you ain’t got to tell her nothing, get in the house.’ But I informed him at that time, ‘I’m a grown man and I can make my own decision.’ We had a little tiff.”

“Brian was drunk, you know, he grabs Bennie, Bennie pushes him,” Johnson said in his statement. “So Brian commenced to running to his house. Charles runs behind him.”

Charles Blades, witnesses said, was trying to play the peacemaker.

Brian and Charles Blades then ran to an upstairs bedroom, where Brian Blades apparently kept the gun, a .380 Walther semiautomatic.

Johnson and Peterson were just behind and got to the top of the stairs just in time to hear the sounds of a scuffle, one of the men shouting “Let go, let go, let go” - and a gunshot.

Peterson said he got into the room just as Charles Blades stumbled and slumped to the floor. Peterson said he ran out of the room yelling for Bennie Blades, who was still outside discussing child custody arrangements.

But during the few seconds Peterson was out of the room, another shot rang out. Peterson ran back, thinking Brian had shot himself, but when he got back into the room found Brian sobbing, talking to a 911 operator.

“He was crying, saying he shot his cousin, get over here right now,” Peterson remembered. “He accidentally shot his cousin and he was crying, why this happen?”

When he died, Charles Blades had a blood alcohol level of 0.24 - three times the level of being legally drunk in Florida.