A young ”gentle giant” who had become a national symbol of the plight of the student-athlete in getting an education erupted violently Thursday in a downtown hotel room.
Former Creighton University basketball player Kevin Ross, who friends said was deeply frustrated by his inability to continue his education, fell into an uncontrollable rage, police said.
About 6:30 a.m., the 6-foot, 9-inch, 250-pound man barricaded himself into Room 830 of the Quality Inn Downtown, 1 S. Halsted St., where he had been staying on the charity of friends. He then began ripping the room apart and tossing its furniture, air conditioner and plumbing from a balcony onto the police cars and sidewalk below.
It took 15 police officers, 2 sets of handcuffs and a pair of leg irons to strap the struggling Ross to a stretcher, police said.
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Ross` mentors and friends portrayed him as a young man troubled by his failures as an athlete and student. In recent months, the onetime star athlete had not worked and had reportedly been drinking heavily. Friends said his life had changed dramatically since 1983, when his efforts to educate himself won him national media attention and speaking engagements.
”He was frustrated, full of anxiety, unable to find a job and having difficulty coping with life,” said Ald. Danny Davis (29th), who had tried to help Ross find work in the last few weeks and was called to the scene Thursday.
”It is tragic because he is just one of hundreds and hundreds of young black males in the same situation,” Davis said. ”I see people like him every day.
”They come into my office, sit in front of me and cry. I am always afraid that they are going to go off.”
If anything, Kevin Ross had a long fuse on his rage, according to those who know him.
A standout basketball player who averaged 23 points and 20 rebounds a game at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kan., Ross won a basketball scholarship to Creighton University, in Omaha, in 1978.
He was accepted at the Missouri Valley Conference school although his college entrance-exam scores were below the national average.
In fact, Ross later admitted, he was functionally illiterate, unable to read even a restaurant menu.
Ross, 28, played at Creighton from 1978 to 1982, but he never fulfilled the promise of his high school years. He started in only 10 games and averaged 4.2 points a game during his career there.
He had a knee injury in his junior year and underwent surgery at the end of the season, during which his team won the conference title. His senior year was marked by dismal performances in athletics and the classroom. He averaged only 3 points a game. His team went 7-20.
And, in spite of tutoring and a course load that included classes in the theory of baseball and ceramics, he was placed on academic probation. At the end of what should have been his final school year, he was 1 1/2 years short in credits needed for graduation.
Ross said in a 1983 interview that he was ready to ”explode” with frustration when Creighton denied him another year of eligibility. The school`s athletic director suggested that he try the highly regarded Westside Preparatory School, 4146 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago.
The school, directed by Marva Collins, has been acclaimed for its demanding standards and high success with poor children. Creighton officials agreed to pay Ross` tuition to the private school.
”They didn`t think I`d have the guts to come,” he said upon entering Westside Prep. ”They said I wouldn`t last a week.”
Although Ross read at only a 2d-grade level when he first squeezed into a makeshift desk at the school, he devoted himself to catching and surpassing his classmates, who often stood at the height of his waist.
On May 25, 1983, Ross gave the commencement address for his graduating class at Westside Prep, alluding to Plato and Michelangelo in his speech. In eight months, he had raised his reading level to that of a high school senior. His story was reported nationally and internationally, and a television movie was made documenting his efforts. Publicity about his illiteracy after four years of college became entwined with the nationwide campaign to upgrade standards for student-athletes that led to the adoption by the NCAA of the controversial Proposition 48, which sets minimum academic standards for freshman athletes.
Under the standards of Proposition 48, Ross would not have qualified for admission to Creighton after graduating from high school in Kansas. But the young man who had inspired the higher standards had apparently begun a promising educational comeback.
”I have confidence that I can achieve anything now,” Ross said upon graduating from Westside Prep. ”I have learned that education is a lifelong pursuit, and I will spend the rest of my life learning.”
Ross enrolled part time at Roosevelt University in Chicago, aiming toward an undergraduate degree in education. To finance his education, he worked in youth summer camps and as a bodyguard for Marva Collins, who had become his mentor. He also gave lectures, even speaking at Harvard University about the plight of the student-athlete.
But a lack of money forced Ross to leave Roosevelt in 1985, according to Denine Johnson, a member of Collins` staff, and other friends. And in recent months, his friends say, his frustration and bitterness grew.
Davis, acting at Collins` request, had lined up a $5-an-hour job for Ross in a summer basketball program for youths at Malcolm X College in Chicago. The program is financed in part by the NCAA.
Directors of the summer program asked that Ross start work July 13. But, to their puzzlement, the young man so badly in need of a job refused to start until last Monday.
Ross stopped by the office of the program`s director early that day and dropped off a resume without completing a job application, said Emmit Horne, director of cooperative education at Malcolm X.
”He left a note saying he would start on the 21st, Tuesday,” Horne said. ”But when I came in Tuesday, my secretary said Mrs. Collins had called and said he was put in the hospital and would call me later. That was the last I heard.
”Now I wish I could have done something more for him,” Horne said.
”But I really don`t know what I could have done.”
By that time, the ”gentle giant,” as Ross was known by Collins and her staff, had begun a shift toward violence, police said.
His frustrations began to manifest themselves physically Monday evening, police said. About 5 p.m., Ross walked out on a $4.25 bar tab for two beers, a shot of cognac and two boiled eggs at Hank`s Ada Tap, near his hotel, owner Hank Hammacher said.
When police were summoned and caught up with Ross near the tavern, he fought them and then wreaked havoc on a squadrol, nearly kicking its door off the hinges, Hammacher said.
He was charged with theft and bailed out by Collins. Ross, who was bruised in the Monday incident, filed a complaint with the city`s Office of Professional Standards alleging that police used excessive force. The complaint is under investigation, police said.
The destruction of his hotel room on Thursday apparently resulted from rage that had simmered since his arrest Monday, friends said. Collins had talked to Ross on the telephone ”nearly every hour” Wednesday night trying to calm him, she told police.
”When he got out of jail on Monday, he was in a very depressed situation; he kept having flashbacks to his college years,” Johnson said.
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Ross had been staying at the Quality Inn since July 10 and was congenial and polite to employees–”a characteristically typical guest,” said resident manager Marco Manzie.
Johnson said Ross` hotel bills were paid by Westside Prep. ”We work as a supportive group here, and if a person has a problem, we help them,” she said.
Manzie said he was unaware Ross was a hotel guest until Tuesday, when he was notified that Ross had not paid his most recent bill.
”He made a phone call, and the bill was paid within about 10 minutes,”
Manzie said. ”It was no real problem, no confrontation.”
A single room similar to Ross` rents for $71 a night at the hotel, but Manzie declined to say what Ross had paid.
Employees of the Olympia Tap Liquors and Grocery across the street from the hotel said Ross had frequented the store several times a week for the last two months.
”All he talked about was how much he cared about Mrs. Collins and that school,” a grocery employee said.
”He always would buy a lottery ticket, and he told me if he ever won, he`d give all the money to Mrs. Collins and the kids at that school.”
Then, police received a report Thursday morning that someone had thrown a television set off an upper-floor balcony.
Ross had called the front desk and requested that four more TV sets be sent to his room. Hotel employees refused.
Moments later, Ross ”threw out the mattress, then the box springs, then the bed boards and then the bed frame,” said Sgt. Harley Schinker.
Ross refused police requests to open the door and continued to toss tables, chairs, lamps and a dresser out the window, Schinker said. An air conditioner and the bathroom sink landed on the roof and trunk of two squad cars, wrecking them.
Ross tried to tear the toilet out. Unsuccessful, he ripped the toilet seat off and threw that onto the street.
Police tried to reason with Ross over the telephone, but that ended when he ripped the phone out and threw it off the balcony. After Ross asked to speak with Marva Collins, officers rushed her to the hotel.
Speaking from an adjoining room balcony, Collins convinced Ross to come out into the hallway, but he fought with police when they tried to handcuff him.
”They had to put two sets of handcuffs and a pair of leg irons on him before strapping him to a stretcher, so they could get him out of there,”
said Harrison Area Detective Cmdr. James Maurer.
After being subdued, Ross was taken to Cook County Hospital for observation. He was charged with two felony counts of criminal damage to property, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of trespass, because he was not in the room he rented.
He was released on a personal recognizance bond Thursday night and placed in the custody of Father George Clements, pastor of Holy Angels Catholic Church.
”Imagine how difficult it must have been to start his schooling over a second time and then run into obstacles,” said Johnson of Westside Prep.
”You have to think of what Kevin endured and what it had done to him over those years.
”I guess he had just become a tinderbox,” she added. ”But how can any of us say what triggered this?”