It was one of their last hurrahs.
The four teenage Belle Glade athletes would soon go their separate ways, most to college in pursuit of professional football dreams. So the lifelong friends went out Saturday night to watch Little Man at a Royal Palm Beach theater, looking for a few final laughs together.
But the good times abruptly ended on the way home, as their SUV swerved off Southern Boulevard into a wall.
The impact killed the driver, Stanfield Watson, 18. His passengers, Curtis Brown, 18, Leslie Fuce, 18, and Fredrick Barthell, 16, were critically injured and flown to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
Royal Palm Beach police did not immediately say what they think led to the crash shortly before 2 a.m. in the 10900 block of Southern Boulevard, close to Our Lady Queen of Peace Cemetery. Family members said they were told Watson may have lost control of the vehicle after trying to avoid hitting an armadillo scurrying across the road.
The crash left the players’ families in shock. Watson, Brown and Fuce were just weeks away from going to college. Like so many other athletes from Glades Central High School who went on to pro sports, they were leaving their impoverished city for the prospect of something much better. Now, the survivors’ football careers are in question.
Almost immediately after the accident, word spread through the grapevine of Belle Glade’s close-knit sports community.
Panicky relatives and friends rushed to St. Mary’s Hospital and huddled in brightly lit emergency rooms. Football players and their coaches crowded the hallways. Each time doctors came by, family members hurled questions at them about the condition of the survivors.
Rhonda Brown’s two sons, Curtis and Fredrick, were recuperating in different wings of the hospital. She went up and down the elevator checking on them. Curtis suffered mostly head wounds and Fredrick injured his legs, but they are expected to live.
“They’ll be OK,” she said, thankful for the moment and not thinking about Curtis’ plans to attend the University of Akron.
Otis William Jr., Fuce’s uncle, was less optimistic. Fuce has significant head and neck injuries, he said. He was in surgery for five hours. Doctors weren’t sure if he would survive.
“I feel bad about this,” William said, pausing and looking up at the ceiling outside the intensive care unit, “but it’s life.”
Back in Belle Glade, about 20 people crammed into the four-bedroom home where Watson lived with his parents. They sat quietly outside the closed-door bedroom where his parents, Mae Campbell Harrison and Norman Harrison, tried to deal with the loss of their son.
Watson called his parents at 1:08 a.m. to tell them he was on his way home from the movies. But at 1:59, police got the call that he lost control of his mother’s Ford Explorer.
Watson’s parents had taken a break this weekend and gone on a cruise-to-nowhere in Fort Lauderdale and booked a room in Miami Beach. They were on their way to the hotel when a friend called with the news. They turned around and drove to Loxahatchee’s Palms West Hospital, where their son’s lifeless body was kept.
He called earlier on Saturday, asking for permission to go out that night and take his mom’s car. She said yes. He had gotten his first paycheck on Friday from the Regal Royal Palm Beach 18 movie theater, said his stepfather, Norman Harrison. He was eager to go out and celebrate. So he and his friends, about 12 altogether, went to the same movie theater.
“They had a bond in the right way,” Harrison said. “They laughed and talked all day long. They were like a fraternity, going out together all the time.”
Watson loved football and was two weeks away from going to Lincoln University in Missouri on a football scholarship.
“We were going to fly him up on July 29,” Campbell Harrison said. “He was supposed to be there on the 30th. The coach [at Lincoln] called him every week. My baby was so excited.”
He wasn’t sure whether to study engineering or business, but he knew he wanted to play football and was determined to do so, she said.
Not even a knee injury and surgery could deter the 6-foot-2 linebacker. His passion didn’t go unnoticed. In October, his high school’s football team made him the “Comeback Player Of The Year” after he rejoined the team for the playoffs following months of rehab.
“I feel really sad,” said Dysaris Pettigrew, 18, a fellow football player. “I have known him all my life.”
Leon Fooksman can be reached at or 561-243-6647.
