"Blood makes the ice melt, kill kill kill." These are the famous words of the Princeton University Band, used during men's ice hockey games at Baker Rink to push Princeton players to attack the opposition.
Never did these words ring more true than they did on Saturday night when, ironically, both teams were in the locker room during the intermission break.
Blood did hit the ice, but it spilled not from a player. Instead, it was the blood of Peter Jacobson, 20, a Princeton University sophomore and the team's mascot. Jacobson, who was employed to wear a full length Tiger uniform and to get the crowd rowdy during the 15 minute period break, was doing just that when he was run over by the zamboni, used to clean the ice.
The zamboni driver, Mark Sewell, 43, was allegedly distracted by a female in the crowd when, driving his zamboni at mid-ice, he felt a bump. His zamboni then stopped moving forward, and Sewell leapt to the ice, only to find Jacobson on the ice, blood hemorrhaging from his right arm.
According to eyewitness testimony, Jacobson had been skating recklessly, attempting to perform triple lutzes on hockey skates and flying to the ice, only minutes before the incident. When he attempted to use the zamboni's speed to garner enough velocity for him to do a back flip, he tripped, leading to the accident.
According to Jennifer Wright, who was sitting in the penalty box during the intermission break because of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty she committed on her boyfriend, Jacobson's tail got caught in the front end of the zamboni — known, after the skate blade, as hockey's deadliest weapon — and lassoed him in. Instead of Jacobson springing forward, as planned, the six foot, five inch tall Jacobson, a captain of the chess team and former bodybuilder, lurched backwards, his arm getting tangled in the deadly zamboni blades.
From there the testimony is hazy. Wright insists that even after the initial collision with Jacobson that Sewell, the driver, maintained driving, even increasing the speed because of the difficulty he encountered. Sewell, who maintains his innocence, instead asserts that, upon smelling road kill, he disabled his machine and leapt to the ice.
When all was said and done, Jacobson's arm remained lodge in the zamboni. Paramedics rushed to the scene and pulled Jacobson's arm out of the machine, though an index finger remained lodged in the machine's heating system. After minutes of intensive searching, the team, led by senior Mark Whitney, found the finger and carried it in pickle juice preservative to Princeton Medical Center, where Jacobson was rushed.
He suffered damage to neither his legs nor his head, though his right arm required major surgery, as did his tail, according to Dr. Donald Haskill, chief surgeon at PMC. Haskill, who formerly worked as chief surgeon at the Honolulu Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, likened Jacobson's wound to one he has seen on victims of shark bites.
"It was bad," he said. "The arm should be one piece, but Jacobson's was severed into two. Besides that, it was charred, like burnt tuna. It was an awful sight."
Haskill performed emergency surgery on Jacobson at the hospital, hoping to save his arm and tail. The eight-hour procedure, which lasted 13 hours, successfully restored his arm. Unfortunately, his tail was too damaged and had to be removed by surgeons.
Police officers in charge of the investigation found little fault with Sewell who, though distracted by a blonde in the crowd, had not a trace of alcohol or drugs in his blood, though did have a high-amount of nicotine, thanks to two patches he wore on his right and left buttocks.
But in the locker room where Jacobson normally suits up investigators found a half empty (or half full) bottle of generic brand whiskey. Upon further tests at the hospital, Jacobson's blood alcohol level was found at .35, only points away from the lethal limit.
A half-drunk, half-sedated Jacobson, vigorously activating a morphine drip and sipping ice-cold apple juice, said he was happy to be alive after the incident.
"I'm happy to be alive," he said.
Morgan Cramer, who is in charge of the Princeton mascot program, instituted in 1984 to save the Princeton Tiger, said that she would not invite Jacobson to perform again at hockey games.
"He made a mockery of the Tiger and of the prestigious position," she said, angrily. "The alcohol, the flips. He'll be lucky if he ever walks again."
Jacobson will walk again. But donning the Tiger uniform — well, that's a completely different story.
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