DETROIT – A former preseason player for the Detroit Lions has been sentenced in connection with a head-on crash that happened in 2021 while he was driving intoxicated on the wrong side of a highway, according to officials.
Alexander Deonte Brown, then 24, of South Carolina, was involved in a crash at 2:13 a.m. Aug. 15, 2021, on southbound I-75 near I-375 in Detroit, authorities said.
Michigan State Police troopers said Brown was intoxicated and driving at a high speed on the wrong side of the freeway when he struck a car driven by a 27-year-old Detroit man. The head-on crash caused an injury to the 27-year-old man’s legs, according to police.
Officials said the man was carried on a backboard by medics and transported to a nearby hospital.
Brown’s front-seat passenger, a 23-year-old man, was trapped inside the car and removed with the jaws of life, police said. Medical officials put a cervical collar on him, placed him on a backboard, and took him to a nearby hospital with a neck injury, according to authorities.
Brown was originally charged with two counts of operating while under the influence causing serious injury and two counts of reckless driving causing serious injury.
He was sentenced March 31, 2023, on one count of operating with a high BAC. He was sentenced to four months in the Wayne County Jail, two years of probation, and fines.
Brown, a cornerback, played 11 snaps for the Lions during a 2021 preseason game against the Buffalo Bills at Ford Field. The team waived him less than 12 hours after the crash, according to the official Twitter account.
