Audio of a 911 call placed to request assistance for a woman that was found in the Seattle hotel room of Colorado Avalanche forward Valeri Nichushkin has been released, to The Seattle Times. The woman believed that she overdosed on alcohol or “something got mixed” in her drink.
An unidentified individual called 911 from the Four Seasons Hotel on April 22 after hotel staff checked Nichushkin’s room and found the woman.
“We suspect someone might have OD’d on alcohol potentially or something got mixed in a drink, we don’t know yet,” the caller stated, according to The Seattle Times.
When 911 dispatch asked if the woman was conscious, the caller said: “They’re hanging in there at the moment. She is awake at the moment, but she’s fading.”
The call was reportedly made at 3:20 p.m. when Avalanche players were boarding the team bus to head to Climate Pledge Arena for Game 3 of their first round series against the Seattle Kraken in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The 911 call stated that the woman could be found “right at the front door” of the Four Seasons Hotel. According to The Seattle Times, there’s no word as to how the woman was moved from the hotel room to the front door of the hotel lobby, where she ended up being treated when medical personnel arrived.
The 28-year old woman was taken to Virginia Mason Medical Center “for being a danger to others due to her assaultive behavior and gravely disabled for being so intoxicated to a point that she is unable to care for herself out in public.”
Avalanche team physician Dr. Bradley Changstrom, who travelled with the team to Seattle, told police that multiple team employees went to Nichushkin’s hotel room and found the woman “in the room heavily intoxicated from an unidentified substance,” according to the police report.
“He believed that she was too intoxicated to have left the hotel in a ride share or cab service,” so Changstrom called 911,” the report read. Changstrom also stated that the woman struck him, but he wasn’t planning on pressing charges.
According to the police report, the woman told police that she was from Russia and was born in Ukraine. She also stated that she “should never have come to the United States and that some guy took her passport and that he was a bad person.”
Following the incident, the Avalanche revealed that Nichushkin wasn’t with the team due to “personal reasons,” but never divulged any further information. Nichushkin had missed the team’s morning skate on April 22 and did not rejoin the team during their eventual first round loss to the Kraken in seven games.
Nichushkin scored a goal in Game 2, which tied the game 2-2 at the 7:30 mark of the second period. During the regular season, the 28-year-old forward scored 17 goals and dished out 30 assists in 53 games.
