Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003 | 11:14 a.m.
The Boulder City High School football player who died suddenly last week had thrown a party in the hours preceding his death, neighbors said.
Police have said there is a good possibility Johnny Aquino, 17, died from a drug overdose, but they are waiting for toxicology tests to say for certain what caused his death Aug. 31. There were no signs of foul play, and Aquino's death is believed to be accidental, police said.
Aquino's parents had allowed the teen to move into his own apartment, and a neighbor in Aquino's four-unit apartment building on Capri Drive said Aquino was having a party the night before he died.
Stephani Voshall, 19, who lived downstairs from Aquino, said only two or three people, including her roommate, were still in Aquino's apartment after midnight. Police were called to the apartment for a medical emergency around 2:45 a.m. Voshall's roommate was still too upset about what happened to talk about it, she said.
Two other neighbors also said there was a party going on in Aquino's apartment the night of Aug. 30.
Voshall said the three Boulder High football players who were suspended from the team were at Aquino's party, but left before Aquino showed any signs of problems.
Football coach Jeff Knutson confirmed that three of his players were suspended from the team for violating school district athletic rules for their role in what happened leading up to Aquino's death. The coach would not elaborate or say whether he believed drugs or alcohol were involved.
Aquino's mother Maria Mendoza said even with all she's heard she still doesn't know what may have caused her son's death.
Aquino's football coach said the teen apparently had a seizure before dying, and Aquino's mother said her son had two seizures when he was a toddler.
"When he was growing up he had two seizures, when he was a year and when he was almost 2, but he never got one again," Mendoza said. "To my knowledge there was nothing wrong with him. He was a strong boy and big."
Mendoza said she's heard rumors that her son overdosed on illegal drugs or that someone gave him a pill.
"A lot of people are saying different things," she said. "We still don't know the whole story about that night."
But Mendoza said she'd be surprised if it turns out Aquino was doing drugs the night of his death.
"I still can't see him doing that, and not just because I'm his mother but because of the type of person he is," Mendoza said. "He was doing so well in school and going to work. ... But we were all teenagers at one point and we all made mistakes and maybe he made a mistake that he paid the ultimate price for."
Some of his fellow students were also surprised by the thought that Aquino might have been doing drugs that night.
"I don't think he was a kid that would do that," Greg Biggs, 17, a senior at Boulder City High, said.
"He wasn't known for that. Not at all," Ron Wedgworth, 16, a sophomore at Boulder City High, said.
Instead Aquino was known as a nice person who was quick to crack a joke.
"He said 'What's up?' to everybody," Biggs said.
"He was a great guy," Voshall said. "He always wanted to see people smile."
About four days before his death, Aquino noticed Voshall's roommate was depressed over problems with her boyfriend so he anonymously left a rose on her car, Voshall said.
When her roommate asked Aquino if the rose came from him, he confessed and said, "You've been so depressed I just wanted to see you smile," Voshall said. "He was great. How many people would something like that?"
Mendoza said her son moved out of their home and into an apartment just up the street around the end of the last school year.
"It was something he wanted to do. And he was 17 and a half and he was responsible," Mendoza said. "We let him know the door's always open for him to come home."
Until a week ago Mendoza said everything seemed to be going well, and Aquino, who was the oldest of six children, was still on track to join the Navy after high school.
"Every Sunday we'd get together with him and have dinner together. Everything was looking fine," She said. "Sometimes things go wrong I guess."
Mendoza said if it turns out her son did do drugs the night of his death, she hopes it will serve as a lesson to others.
Voshall said that while the lesson will certainly hit home for Aquino's closest friends, she doubts it would have a lasting effect on other teens.
Exactly a year before Aquino died, two young adults died in a drunken driving accident on an all-terrain-vehicle in Boulder City.
After that accident many people promised to stop drinking and never to drink and drive again, Voshall said. But about two months after that accident, people were acting just as they had before the accident, she said.
"But hopefully people will learn from this and hopefully it sticks," Voshall said.
A sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said it is particularly troubling for society to accept the death of someone so young and seemingly healthy, partly because of the great significance society places on athletics.
"A big part of our society and popular culture is that we look to sports for entertainment and we see an aura and mythology of athletics that make us believe that athletes are somehow less vulnerable -- that they're stronger, faster and jump higher," said Fred Preston, professor of sociology at UNLV.
"But when something like this happens we are reminded that athletes are just as vulnerable as any of us. And it is an especially harder jolt when it is a young person who dies."
Preston said that while some can argue that there may be a higher use of drugs in the subculture of athletics if you factor in steroids with recreational use, it really is not much more significant than in any other cross-section of society.
"The use of drugs by teenagers varies across the board and from team to team and school to school," Preston said. "You cannot separate the athletes from the rest of youth culture that experiments with drugs."
He noted, however, that the depiction in movies of athletes celebrating with alcohol and drugs at after-game parties "certainly plays a role" in the perception that it is common for young athletes to use drugs.
"They (young athletes) need to find better role models," Preston said. "There are many top athletes out there who use neither performance-enhancing drugs nor recreational drugs -- athletes who are squeaky clean."
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