Crossing the line

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This article was published 14/09/2019 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Competing in high-pressure athletic events can be stressful for everyone involved — especially the unfortunate people who put on striped shirts and try to enforce the rules.

Consider the alarming case of a referee who was smacked with a stick and pummelled on the ice during a melee at a youth hockey tournament in Lethbridge, Alta., last Sunday.

According to the Calgary Herald, assault charges have been laid against two Alberta men after the ref and a coach were attacked on the ice at the Quest for the Cup three-on-three hockey tournament.

Police say the incident began when a 10-year-old male player engaged in a verbal altercation with the referee and then slashed the official twice with his stick. The referee, police say, pushed the player to the ice, which prompted a group of adults, including coaches and a relative of the player, to take to the ice.

A cellphone video shot by a spectator captured the confrontation in which five unidentified people without skates confront the referee, who is knocked to the ice and struck repeatedly. The coach from the opposing team was also pushed to the ice before the melee was halted. The men sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

“It’s absolutely crazy, it should never happen… having a disagreement about a call is one thing, but I can’t fathom people taking it to that extent,” one parent later said of the assaults, which sparked national headlines.

Sadly, incidents like this are far from unusual, as we see from today’s heavily penalized list of Five Infamous Attacks on Sports Referees:

 

5) The unfortunate ref: NHL linesman Don Henderson

The tragic incident: It was a hit heard (and seen) around the National Hockey League. On Jan. 27, 2016, Calgary Flames defenceman Dennis Wideman was skating to the bench when he delivered what appeared to be a vicious crosscheck to the back of linesman Don Henderson. Henderson, who suffered a concussion, remained on the ice until being helped up by fellow officials. Later, Wideman claimed the hit was unintentional and he did not see Henderson until the last moment. “I was just trying to get off the ice,” he told reporters after the game. “At the last second, I looked up and saw him. I couldn’t avoid it.” Not everyone agreed. It was later revealed that, prior to the collision, Wideman had suffered a concussion after being body-checked by a Nashville Predators player. Wideman was handed a 20-game suspension, but the penalty was reduced to 10 games by a neutral arbitrator who concluded the attack was not intentional. In 2017, the injured linesman filed a US$10.2-million lawsuit against the Flames and Wideman. In his statement of claim, Henderson said he was still not able to work because he suffered head and neck injuries and a concussion in the incident. In 2018, a judge stayed the lawsuit and ordered the case heard by an NHL arbitrator. After the suit was tossed, Henderson was ordered to pay partial legal costs to the Flames and Wideman. Henderson’s lawyers have appealed. For the record, the harshest penalty every dished out by the NHL came at the end of Game 4 of the 1927 Stanley Cup Finals, when famed tough guy Billy Coutu of the Boston Bruins started a bench-clearing brawl, reportedly at the request of coach Art Ross. Coutu assaulted referee Jerry Laflamme and tackled ref Billy Bell in a corridor after the game. He was expelled from the NHL for life, the longest suspension to date. Although the ban was lifted in 1929-30, he never played in the league again.

 

4) The unfortunate ref: Football ref Peter McCabe Jr.

The tragic incident: Football is a hard-hitting game, but the violence is supposed to come to an end when the final whistle blows. But that’s not what happened in October 2009 after a semi-professional game at Edgerton Park in Rochester, N.Y. After losing a close North American Football League game, Leon Woods, a running back with the Western New York Cougars, lost control of his emotions. Woods walked over to a group of officials after the game, swung his helmet and smashed it into the face of 54-year-old veteran referee Peter McCabe Jr. A witness, in a deposition released by police, claimed that he “heard a hard crack.” Another official told a local TV station that the player was yelling, “Take that! Take that!” McCabe suffered a fractured skull and had his nose and multiple bones in his face broken when he was attacked without warning. “We’ve been managing a quality organization for the past 11 years and have never seen an incident like this before,” NAFL commissioner Robin Williams later told zebrablog.com. The referee, who said that game would be his last, was forced to undergo extensive reconstructive surgery. The attack also caused the ref to lose his sense of taste and smell, he argued in a lawsuit accusing the City of Rochester of failing to provide proper security for the football game at a city-owned park. A repentant Woods eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. “In the moment that I hit him, as I walked off the field, that’s when I realized that it actually took place. My heart was beating real fast because I knew it was wrong and that I did something wrong,” the player-turned-prisoner said in a TV interview. “Within that short time span, I feel that I messed up my life faster than I can make something out of my life. Within that 15 seconds, I destroyed my life. As far as Mr. McCabe, in that 15 seconds I basically ruined his whole life… he’s not going to come back from that and will always have to live with what happened.”

 

3) The unfortunate ref: Polish boxing ref Mageja Dziurgota

The tragic incident: Like football, boxing can be a brutal, violent affair. But referees are not supposed to be the ones fending off vicious assaults inside the ring. But that is exactly what happened in 2014 when Croatian boxer Vido Loncar took out his frustration on a referee after losing a bout at the European Youth Boxing Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. In video footage, ref Mageja Dziurgota of Poland can be seen giving the 18-year-old light-middleweight a standing eight-count in his bout against Algirdas Baniulis of Lithuania. Loncar appeared to compose himself, but the referee called off the fight deeming the young Croatian was not in a fit state to continue. “Clearly enraged by the decision, Loncar returned to his corner where his trainers removed his clothes,” the Independent, a British newspaper, reported at the time. “But the referee called the two boxers back to the centre of the ring to declare a winner, and Loncar saw the moment as a chance to take out his frustration — by viciously knocking the referee to the floor with a right-hook. Loncar didn’t stop there though, as he continued the assault on the defenceless man as he lay prone on the canvas. Baniulis, having just beaten Loncar, decided he wasn’t going to hang around to stop the attack… he sprinted away from the ring in a true act of cowardice.” Loncar was dragged out of the ring by his feet by security guards and was later arrested, while his victim was taken to hospital. The Croatian boxing director initially defended his fighter’s conduct. “I believe that he is not a butcher or as bad as this act makes him look,” Zeljko Mavrovic said. “His was part of his excessive ambition in that moment.” Loncar and his coaches were later barred for life by the International Boxing Association for the assault. International Boxing Association (AIBA) president Ching-Kuo Wu said: “AIBA and the entire boxing family have zero tolerance for this sort of behaviour.” The Croatian federation abjectly apologized, and the referee recovered in hospital.

 

2) The unfortunate ref(s): Soccer referees Cesar Flores and Otavio da Silva

The tragic incident(s): No one will be surprised to hear that soccer referees are sometimes subjected to violent attacks. But the level of violence in these two horrific incidents shocked even hardcore fans of the sport around the world. In February 2016, a soccer ref was gunned down on the field after showing a player a red card in an amateur match in Argentina. According to reports, Cesar Flores, 48, was refereeing the game in Cordoba, Argentina, when he ejected a player. The player then reportedly left the field, came back with a gun that he retrieved from his backpack and murdered Flores. A CBC story said Flores was shot three times — in the head, chest and neck — by the player, who at last report remained the focus of a police manhunt. “It all happened during the match,” a police spokesman told the Efe news agency. “We don’t know what happened with the referee, but the player was angry and went to get his gun and killed him.” Another player, Walter Zarate, 25, was shot in the chest, but was said to be recovering in hospital. As grisly as that attack was, it pales in comparison to a horrifying incident that occurred in 2013 in northern Brazil. According to multiple reports, referee Otavio da Silva, 20, expelled player Josenir dos Santos Abreu, 30, from a June match in the remote town of Pio XII. Abreu refused to leave the field and the two got into a fistfight, which ended when the young ref took out a knife and stabbed Abreu, who died on his way to hospital. That, according to the state’s Public Safety Department, is when an angry mob of Abreu’s friends and relatives stormed the field and stoned the referee to death before severing his head. “Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field,” The Associated Press reported at the time. Police later arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with the gruesome crime. “We will identify and hold accountable all those involved,” police chief Valter Costa was quoted as saying by local media. “One crime will never justify another.”

 

1) The unfortunate ref: U.S. soccer ref John Bieniewicz

The tragic incident: It may not have been as brutal as some of the attacks on today’s list, but the death of John Bieniewicz, 44, from Westland, Mich., seems especially tragic because it was completely senseless. Bieniewicz was declared brain dead the morning of July 1, 2014, two days after being sucker-punched by player Bassel Saad while refereeing a recreational league game in suburban Detroit. Saad, 36, knocked the ref to the turf with one punch after Bieniewicz indicated he planned to eject the player from the game with a red-card penalty. As he lay unconscious on the field, his hand still clutched the red penalty card he was about to serve. His death shocked sports fans throughout the world and renewed concerns about attacks on referees on this side of the Atlantic. Inside a Detroit courtroom in 2015, Bieniewicz’s widow slowly raised her left arm holding a red card — a symbolic completion of the ref’s attempt to penalize Saad on that fatal day. “Before I go, the one final thing I would like to do is, I would like to serve Mr. Saad with the red card that he was entitled to,” Kris Bieniewicz said at the end of her sentencing remarks to Wayne County Circuit Judge Thomas Cameron, according to the Detroit Free Press. Moments later, Cameron sentenced Saad to eight to 15 years in prison as part of a deal in which the Dearborn man pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. He was originally charged with second-degree murder, a tougher charge that Kris said should have stayed. “It’s murder in my eyes,” she said. “Mr. Saad murdered my husband.” After he punched the ref, the trial was told, Saad sat inside a Jeep, his arm and middle finger extended upward in an obscene gesture in the direction of Bieniewicz. Before handing down the sentence, Cameron said to Saad: You “personify everything that is wrong” with the “escalation of violence in sports.” The ref never saw the punch coming. His wife said he loved officiating amateur games. “Soccer was his passion. He died doing what he loved,” but “his death was senseless. It’s ridiculous. It makes absolutely no sense.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca