STRAWBERRY USED DRUGS THIS PAST WEEKEND

TAMPA, Fla., April 3 — As prosecutors vowed to seek prison time for Darryl
Strawberry, a report from his probation officer today revealed that he
admitted he had gone on a cocaine-smoking spree over the weekend.

Strawberry, 39, the former Yankees and Mets slugger who has been battling
colon cancer and drug addiction and who has had bouts of severe depression,
tested positive for cocaine today, according to the report from Shelley J.
Tomlinson, his probation officer with the Florida Department of
Corrections. She gave the report to Circuit Court Judge Florence Foster,
who will decide if Strawberry will go to prison.

Strawberry remained for observation in St. Joseph's Hospital, where he had
checked in Monday night after friends from his Yankees days — Ray Negron
and Ron Dock — picked him up in Daytona Beach, Fla. Once doctors determine
that Strawberry is mentally stable, he will be transferred to Hillsborough
County Jail.

In the first official account of his four-day disappearance from a drug
treatment center, the report said that Strawberry had told Tomlinson that
he had planned to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on Thursday night,
but that a female friend began smoking crack cocaine and that he could not
resist joining her. From there, he said, she took him to a nearby motel,
where five men with guns took his jewelry, but they continued to smoke
crack cocaine.

The next day, he said, the group picked up more drugs and drove to a motel
in Orlando, Fla. Later that day, he said, his female friend and the men
left, promising to return. When they did not, he said, he had a friend from
Daytona Beach pick him up.

Pam Bondi, the Hillsborough County assistant state attorney, said that
prosecutors would seek prison time for Strawberry's violating the terms of
his house arrest.

He faces up to five years in prison, she said.

"Following the law is what this is about," she said. "He has had every
opportunity for rehabilitation, and has failed to take advantage. He had
his shot at probation; he had his shot at house arrest, then house arrest
on a monitor. And then he had drug rehabilitation, where he absconded from
the program twice."

When Strawberry violated his probation this past Thursday by leaving his
treatment center, HealthCare Connections in North Tampa, it was his third
violation, Bondi said.

"It is our position that we would be negligent as prosecutors if we didn't
seek prison time," she said. "Not only is he a danger to himself; he is a
danger to others in our community."

Strawberry's lawyer, Joe Ficarrotta, said: "Darryl Strawberry is not only
fighting drug addiction at its highest level, but also fighting a battle
against cancer, which is the very aggressive form that he has. And with
that cancer, the chemotherapy creates very physical and emotional problems."

On the return from Daytona Beach, with Strawberry secured, Negron and Dock
met John Parsons, who has been working on a film with the financially
strapped Strawberry since December, and Parsons did another interview with him.

"This guy is sick," Parsons said. "He didn't want to take his chemo. When
he talked to his friends, they were crying."

Strawberry was sentenced to two years of house arrest this past September
after crashing his car while driving under the influence of sleeping pills,
and for violating his probation for a 1999 arrest on drug and
prostitution-solicitation charges.

In October, he left his drug treatment center and was arrested again. He
was found to have been smoking crack cocaine and taking an anti- anxiety drug.

On Nov. 3, as he was being held in the Hillsborough County Jail, Strawberry
told Foster that he had lost his will to live and that he had considered
suicide.

"Life hasn't been worth living for me, that's the honest truth," he told
her, adding, "I am not afraid of death."

He added that he had stopped his chemotherapy in jail.

After hearing testimony about the gravity of Strawberry's condition, Foster
knocked nine days off his 30- day sentence and ordered him to wear an
electronic ankle bracelet that allowed corrections officials to monitor his
presence at the drug treatment center. Yet she warned him at the time that
one more drug violation would land him in prison.

"If you can't make it on the outside, I'll find a place where you can get
treatment on the inside," she said.