Crippled Football Player Testifies in Racially Charged Case
ADA, Okla.
Confined to a wheelchair and attached to a ventilator and medical monitors, a former East Central University football player testified last week that he lost the use of his arms and legs in a racially charged, hit-and-run incident in which a teammate was killed.
“I can’t move. I can’t feed myself. I can’t take a bath,” Dennis Scales of Mansfield, Texas, said during the opening day of testimony in the trial of Ammon Dean Reich, who is charged with first-degree murder in the Sept. 19 death of ECU football player Joseph Tusan.
Tusan, who was 18, died and Scales, 19, became a quadriplegic after the truck they were in was struck from behind by Reich’s vehicle on U.S. 377-Oklahoma 99 in Pontotoc County about 60 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. Reich, 43, of Konawa, also faces multiple counts of assault and battery. He has pleaded innocent.
Tusan, of Arlington, Texas, and Scales are Black . Reich is White.
Scales, transported from Texas in an ambulance to testify in the case, spoke softly and struggled for breath as he told Reich’s 12-member jury he was hospitalized for a month following the collision. He has been hospitalized two or three times since.
