As The Baltimore Sun describes, Charles E. Smith won bronze in the 1988 Olympics, helped lead Georgetown University to the top eight in the 1989 NCAA tournament, and was both a consensus All American and Big East Player of the Year in 1989. Smith made his NBA debut with the Boston Celtics in 1989, per the Chicago Tribune, playing two seasons before his career came to an abrupt halt.
On March 22, 1991, Smith went to a club with his college roommate, AP reported, where the Chicago Tribune reported he'd drank a couple of beers over two hours. He was also supposedly taking codeine for a toothache. Then he got behind the wheel. At around 1:30 a.m., Smith plowed his van into two female students, throwing them to the curb and killing them both. Continuing his errors of judgment, Smith drove a few more blocks before making a U-turn and returning to the scene, only to drive by as witnesses gathered.
As the AP notes, it was a taxicab driver who spotted Smith's vehicle and followed him, leading police to his location via radio, where Smith was arrested about a mile away. While being cleared of manslaughter and driving under the influence of alcohol (his BAC was 0.06 while the state's limit was 0.10), a year later Smith was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, serving two and a half years before being paroled.
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