Son of Flyers GM avoids jail time for viral wheelchair incident
Carson Briere, the son of Philadelphia Flyers general manager Daniel Briere, will avoid jail time for a March incident where he pushed a woman's empty wheelchair down a flight of stairs at a bar in Erie, Pa.
According to a report by Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer, both Briere (then a junior on the Mercyhurst University men's hockey team) and Patrick Carrozzi will serve 15 months probation for a "second-degree misdemeanor count of criminal mischief as part of a program for first-time, nonviolent offenders," per a ruling by the Erie County Court of Common Pleas Judge John J. Mead. According to the Erie Times-News, which first reported the ruling, the probation program will allow the charges to be dismissed and their records expunged.
Tornoe's report added that, according to court records, the wheelchair was owned by a double amputee who lost her legs in a 2021 car crash.
Carrozzi and the younger Briere were shown on video, via a security camera, sitting on and playing with the wheelchair before pushing it down the stairs. The video was posted on X, then known as Twitter, and went viral.
The 24-year-old Briere was removed from the school's hockey team but entered the NCAA's Division I transfer portal and eventually signed with a team in Slovakia's Tipos Extraliga, per Tornoe.
According to a March report by ESPN's Greg Wyshynski, he was a redshirt freshman with Arizona State during the 2019-20 season but was dismissed from that program in November 2019 for an alleged "clear violation of team rules" and because he "was not a culture fit."
Daniel Briere took over as the Flyers interim GM in March after the organization's previous GM and president (Chuck Fletcher) was fired. The 46-year-old Briere played 17 seasons in the NHL from 1997-2015.
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