CINCINNATI -- Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick told WCPO Monday he does not want to comment about statements he made that revealed he was with the driver of a fatal wrong-way crash hours before it happened.
"I just want to show his family respect right now," Kirkpatrick said. "Everybody took (what I said) and ran with it. Just right now, I don’t need to say too much more.”
Kirkpatrick tweeted Friday he knew rapper Kory Wilson had been drinking and couldn't drive before police said Wilson caused a fatal wrong-way crash on I-75.
Kirkpatrick wrote he was hanging out with Wilson not long before the rapper, according to police, went the wrong way on northbound I-75. A subsequent crash killed Wilson and a Fairfield couple returning home after visiting family in Kentucky.
"I just want y'all to know that was my friend that got killed last night. And I was with him and I knew he was drinking and didn't stop him," Kirkpatrick tweeted Friday.
Kirkpatrick's tweets
Witnesses told police Wilson might've been headed north before turning around on the freeway and heading south in the northbound lanes. Evendale police said they were look into whether that description of events is true.
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Near the Evendale GE plant at about 3:30 a.m., Wilson's Chevrolet Suburban crashed into an Audi A8 carrying 61-year-old Nazih Shtaiwi and his wife, 55-year-old Halla Odeh Shtaiwi.
Wilson and the Shtaiwis were killed.
Motor vehicle expert Dan Aerni examined images of the wreckage and came to a stark conclusion: The crash was simply not survivable, he said.
James Gist, 36, of Hamilton, was in a third car involved in the crash. Crews took him to Mercy Fairfield with non-life threatening injuries.
Kirkpatrick implored people not to drink and drive, and he wrote he regrets leaving his friend Wilson at a bar.
"Man I'm so hurt right now. bc I talk about drinking and driving all the Time and for me to leave him at that bar like that killing me," he wrote.
Later, he expressed condolences to the Shtaiwis: "Sry about the lost to the innocent family as well"
