A disabled woman whose wheelchair was pushed down a flight of stairs by Mercyhurst University men’s hockey center Carson Briere blasted his “insincere” apology after the incident.
Briere, the son of former NHL player and interim Flyers GM Daniel Briere, was caught on camera pushing an unoccupied wheelchair down the steps at Sullivan’s Pub in Erie, Pennsylvania on Saturday night with two other student athletes from the school.
Footage of the incident shared by Julia Zukowski shows Briere, wearing a white hat, sit within the chair in a hallway at the highest of a stairwell before cruelly shoving it down the steps before walking back into the crowded bar.
Zukowski claimed that the occupant of the wheelchair needed to be “physically carried” downstairs to make use of the lavatory later that night.
The owner of the chair, who identified herself on social media as “Sydney,” bashed Briere in a series of tweets Wednesday and said she is going to donate a lot of the $8,000 raised on GoFundMe for a recent wheelchair after hers was damaged.
“Hi im Sydney and it was my chair that was pushed down the steps. I’m so thankful for all of Sullivan’s assist in this example and the sort comments I see on Julia’s post,’ she wrote on her Twitter account, @_legless_wonder, posing beside an worker of the bar.
“I swear I actually don’t wanna keep a cent of the donated money, I’d much relatively give it to those that need it,” she said, before later adding she’ll keep enough to repair her wheelchair.
Sydney said in a separate tweet that she doesn’t blame the bar, and said security made Briere apologize before they kicked him out. But she claimed the school hockey player was “insincere” and he even asked the bouncer “Do I still need to go?” after apologizing.
She said in quite a few tweets that he seemed coherent.
“They’ve shown their true colours,” she wrote in a post. “Those being that they’re entitled, spoiled, ignorant, douchecanoes. I don’t wanna damage their lives but they’ve clearly only gotten a slap on the wrist their whole lives. They should learn their behavior is totally unacceptable.”
On Wednesday, the college’s athletic department said Briere, in addition to two other student-athletes within the video, were placed on interim suspension from their respective teams.
“I’m deeply sorry for my behavior on Saturday,” Briere, a junior at Mercyhurst, said in an announcement. “There isn’t any excuse for my actions, and I’ll do whatever I can to make up for this serious lack of judgment.”
Mercyhurst University, which is positioned in Erie, said they’ve been made aware of the video.
The varsity told The Every day Mail that the Erie Police Department was taking up the investigation.
Sydney said she is going to use among the GoFundMe money to repair the damaged chair, but the remainder will probably be donated.
“I would love to make clear that I’m using the GoFundMe donations to assist fix my chair but all the remainder goes to the disabled community and to individuals who actually need the assistance,” she tweeted Thursday night.
Briere, a Philadelphia native, played 30 games for the Lakers within the 2022-23 season — totaling five goals and eight assists. He was dismissed from the boys’s hockey team at Arizona State as a freshman in 2019 for what this system said was a violation of team rules.
His father Daniel Briere played 17 seasons within the NHL including six with the Flyers and a Stanley Cup appearance with Philadelphia in 2010.
He was just named interim general manager of the team on Friday.
