They were a pair of close friends traveling too fast in a car that veered off the road and slammed into a utility pole near Lombard. The driver, Pierre Washington-Steel, a well-liked running back for Glenbard West’s powerhouse football team, died six days later. His passenger and football buddy, Demarco Whitley, was severely injured.
Hundreds gathered at a football field candlelight vigil shortly after the crash in January 2010, and a scholarship was later established in Washington-Steel’s name. In a full-page memorial, the yearbook said, “The world would be a better place if we all could let Pierre shine through us.”
That spring, Whitley returned to school, earning enough credits to graduate early. In December, he was nominated for a student character award.
But now Whitley is at the center of shocking accusations that have transformed sorrow into anger and confusion and stunned the Glenbard West community. Authorities allege that an hour before the deadly wreck, Whitley and Washington-Steel raped a 15-year-old girl in a northwest suburban church parking lot.
Whitley is to be arraigned on the sexual assault charge this week. And although talk about his arrest may be churning at the high school, students publicly have been reticent. Close friends of Washington-Steel and Whitley maintain a public silence, and few others will offer more than saying they’re shocked.
Meanwhile, Washington-Steel’s family, which also is declining to comment, has asked the school district to discontinue the scholarship.
“I don’t know what to think,” said Chris Warden, father of a former teammate of Washington-Steel and Whitley. “How do you determine how to feel based on allegations?”
Cindy Purdom, president of the Glenbard West Boosters, said there are plenty of raw emotions to go around, but few answers.
“No one knows anything for sure,” she said. “I’m sure the kids are questioning a lot of things right now.”
Dramatically perched atop a hill in the center of Glen Ellyn, Glenbard West adds an almost Ivy League presence to the charming downtown where banners from lamp posts tout “Glen Ellyn Style.” Trees surround much of the red brick, Gothic revival school, bounded on the north by the football field, where the vigil was held, and 10-acre Lake Ellyn.
On a recent afternoon, junior Danny Noriega said many were having a difficult time believing that Whitley and Washington-Steel were guilty.
Sophomore Remy Gorman said Washington-Steel should never have been mentioned during the court hearing because he has no way of defending himself.
Another student, who declined to give her name
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was angry that charges were filed so close to the anniversary of the crash.
“People are in mourning over this guy,” she said.
By the time he’d arrived at Glenbard West in August 2009, Washington-Steel had already endured some rocky years. Expelled in 2007 from Loyola Academy in Wilmette for showing friends inappropriate camera-phone video of a female student, he enrolled at Driscoll Catholic in Addison, where he also played football.
In August 2008, court and police records show that his father, Ray Washington, was charged with punching his son in the face during football practice. Less than a year later, Washington was shot to death in a building he owned on the West Side. That’s when Pierre Steel became Pierre Washington-Steel.
Driscoll closed in May 2009 and Washington-Steel enrolled at Glenbard West.
His friend Whitley had been a student at the school since 2007, and was a reserve running back on the varsity Hilltoppers team that lost the 2009 state football championship in double overtime. Washington-Steel scored nine touchdowns that year and ran for 717 yards.
Two months after that final game, Cook County prosecutors contend, Washington-Steel phoned the 15-year-old girl, whom he’d known from a school both had attended. He and Whitley picked her up in Rolling Meadows. After both allegedly assaulted the girl in Washington-Steel’s car, they dropped her at a friend’s home, prosecutors said.
The next morning, she told her family she had been attacked, and police were notified, prosecutors said.
DNA evidence linked Whitley to the crime, and he admitted to police that he had sexual intercourse with the victim even though he knew she was refusing, prosecutors said at his bond hearing this month. Whitley was charged with criminal sexual assault. It remains unclear what evidence links Washington-Steel to the case.
The girl and her mother have declined to comment. Whitley’s attorney, Donna Rotunno, said she is examining whether the girl consented.
The strongest indicator may be, Rotunno said, that she allowed Washington-Steel and Whitley to take her to a friend’s house.
“That to me is a red flag about what may or may haven’t happened,” Rotunno said, adding that Washington-Steel may have “directed and orchestrated” Whitley, who had no previous criminal background.
Accounts conflict on what happened the night of the crash. The DuPage County sheriff’s report states in one section that the 2008 Ford Fusion, driven by Washington-Steel, was heading south on Swift Road near St. Charles Road in unincorporated Lombard. But the diagram accompanying the report suggests it was traveling north.
Either way, the car was moving fast as it passed four cars before leaving the two-lane road and striking the utility pole on the west side of Swift Road about 7:45 p.m., the sheriff’s report states.
Washington-Steel died on Feb. 4. Whitley was hospitalized for several weeks and underwent weeks of physical therapy, preventing him from returning to the football team.
Today, a blue cross bearing Washington-Steel’s initials and a bouquet of red roses mark the pole.
Free on $5,000 cash bond, Whitley will not return to school and is planning to take college entrance exams. He and his family have declined to comment.
Since Whitley’s arrest — he was picked up on his way to school — the student body and others are experiencing a range of emotions, including sadness, anger and confusion, said Glenbard High School District 87 Superintendent Michael J. Meissen.
“We have feelings for all of the young adults involved in this … as well as their families,” he said. “It is a tragic situation. …”
When their classmate died a year ago, a few Glenbard West students walked across the street to Grace Lutheran Church and asked Pastor Richard Likeness if they could use the sanctuary to pray.
The recent allegations amount to piling “tragedy on top of tragedy,” Likeness said.
The traditional response ministers give when heartbreaking and confusing events arise, he said, is that God is present even in the midst of tragedy. But he says he isn’t sure whether that is always a comfort.
“For some it is,” Likeness said. “But when the hurt is that raw and the tragedy that awful, it still doesn’t make sense and I really don’t try to make sense of it for people. I don’t think there is a good answer.”
