ASU player is arrested in murder
Former safety shot to death outside Scottsdale nightclub
Anne Ryman, Emily Bittner and Lindsey Collom
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 27, 2005 12:00 AM
Arizona State University football player Loren Wade is being held in the shooting death of former ASU player Brandon Falkner outside a Scottsdale hip-hop club early Saturday morning.
Brandon Falkner, 25, of Tempe, was shot in the head as he sat in his BMW outside the club CBNC near McDowell and Scottsdale roads.The shooting appears to have been over Wade's girlfriend, former ASU soccer standout Haley vanBlommestein.
Wade, 21, fired one shot after having "sharp words" with Falkner, whose vehicle then proceeded several hundred feet across the parking lot, struck another vehicle and hit a tree, police said.
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Tyrone Bowers, 25, was in the BMW with Falkner and two other friends when vanBloomestein walked up to the car, Bowers said. She had said only a few words when Wade ran up and demanded, "Why are you talking to my girl?" Bowers said.
Bowers heard a gun rooster.
"First he hit him with the gun on the back of the head, and then he shot him," Bowers said.
Falkner's foot hit the gas pedal, and the BMW took off across the parking lot.
Bowers grabbed the steering wheel and struggled to control the car, he said. The BMW smacked into a curb, an airbag deployed and Bowers lost his grip. Grabbing the wheel of the moving car again, he was unable to avoid hitting a sport utility vehicle and a tree just yards from Scottsdale Road.
Off-duty Maricopa County Sheriff's Office detectives working security at the club heard the gunshot and arrested Wade.
Falkner was taken to Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn, where he was pronounced dead.
Wade, who is being held without bond at the Madison Street Jail, has a preliminary court appearance at 8:30 a.m. on April 4.
"The exchange was very brief. Everything happened very quickly," Scottsdale police Detective Sam Bailey said.
If it were an act of passion, Brandon's brother Jelani said, it was unwarranted.
"She was a friend of his," he said. "That's probably the conversation they were having. They hadn't seen each other in a while and were probably catching up."
VanBloomestein, he said, used to hang out at their house.
"They were never romantically involved. They were just friends. We've known her the last two or three years."
Police say vanBloomestein called Wade and asked him to pick her up at CBNC, a plush hip-hop club frequented by celebrities Lil' Kim and Britney Spears when they're in town.
Wade went to the club about 2:30 a.m. to pick up vanBlommestein. He parked his rust-colored Camaro and began looking for her in the strip-center parking lot where CBNC sits sandwiched between a furniture store and a mailbox-and-shipping business, police said.
He couldn't find her and called vanBloomestein's cellphone to ask where she was. She told him, and Wade saw vanBloomestein get out of a car and walk over to Falkner's BMW, which is when Wade walked over, police said.
ASU officials moved quickly Saturday morning after hearing the news. Coaches had been looking for Wade at the Saturday morning practice when they found out what had happened. They quickly canceled practice and in short order dismissed Wade from the team and then suspended him from the university, citing several team and university violations, including possessing a firearm (team violation) and being charged with a violent crime (university violation).
A feel-good story
Until his senior year at ASU, Falkner was one of those feel-good success stories college athletics are supposed to be about.
Their mother in a coma, Falkner and Jelani, who is one year older, dedicated their games at Peoria High School to her, writing her initials on their wrists and praying with their father before games.
They helped with the bills, fixed their own meals, cleaned the house, stayed out of trouble and did well in school.
After winning a playoff game that year, Brandon Falkner said: "I kept thinking the whole game 'I've got to get one (an interception) for my mom.' I finally got one for her."
Connie Clark watched the Falkner boys grow up in Peoria.
Clark keeps pictures of Brandon and his brother in a drawer. There's a picture from 1990 of Brandon, beaming in a soccer uniform.
Both he and his brother were good boys, she said, raised in a God-fearing home.
She recalled Brandon as being "very smart, very studious." There was never any trouble that she could see, not even as he grew older.
"Brandon would always sit here and answer all the questions I had," she said. "I always knew he'd do well."
Hard times
But in June 2002, Falkner was released from the Sun Devils for team rule violations.
He had been in court on charges of driving with a suspended license, no registration, failure to provide evidence of financial responsibility and violation of a promise to appear. He later pleaded guilty to all of those charges except the violation of the promise to appear. A warrant, at one time, had been issued for his arrest.
The family encouraged Brandon to go to Europe and play football there. He wore No. 11 as a safety for the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns of the German Football League.
"We all thought he should go," Clark said. "He had no more ties here."
Falkner was "very happy" in Germany until his tenure was cut short by an injury that affected his kidneys, Clark said.
A return visit to the States convinced Brandon that he wanted to be home with his family and to continue his studies. He re-enrolled at ASU.
"As an Afro-American young man, he was a very good example to other young men behind him," said his father, Bonnie Falkner. "He was very conscientious about reaching higher goals."
Wade's troubles
Loren Wade missed the final nine games of last season because of an internal investigation into him receiving illegal benefits from a former athletic department employee, Wendy Adams.
That internal investigation is ongoing, and ASU is awaiting a date for a Pac-10 hearing, said Athletic Director Gene Smith on Saturday.
Any sanctions from the Pac-10 then are forwarded to the NCAA for approval. It's unknown if the shooting will impact the future of the case.
ASU head coach Dirk Koetter did not know if the games that Wade missed ultimately would suffice as a penalty or if he would be required to sit out further games. But Wade was expected to play in the fall. He was the starting tailback for five games as a redshirt freshman in 2003 and the only three games he played in '04.
Wade redshirted in 2002 out of Serra High School in Gardena, Calif.
The two men never were teammates. Police wonder if they even knew each other.
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ASU player is arrested in murder
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