Disgruntled Parent Hires PI in Effort to Get High School Coach Fired

Here's a fun story of an obsessive, overbearing parent desperately trying to live vicariously through his high school basketball-playing son. John Lekas, unhappy with his son's playing time, hired private investigator Debra Hennessee to dig up dirt on head coach David Adelman in an attempt to get him fired.

Hennessee would eventually call police after Adelman had a few adult beverages (depending on who you believe, it was either five or ten beers) and decided to drive to Taco Bell. (Because, really, nothing goes better with a buzz than a passenger seat full of 89-cent burritos.)

Adelman, who blew a .14, was arrested for driving drunk, and now his lawyer is hoping to get the case dismissed on the grounds that police didn't have probable cause to stop the coach in the first place.

Via The Oregonian:

"There was no other way to get the principal or the school board's attention on concerns about [Adelman's] drinking and behavior (than to hire a private investigator)," [Lekas' attorney Mike] Layne said at the end of a wild day before Multnomah Circuit Judge Jerome LaBarre. ...

In arguing there was no probable cause for the stop, Houze made much of the fact that the first two cops at the scene both said they did not see the traffic infraction -- changing lanes without signaling -- that Officer Josh Sparks cited as his reason for stopping Adelman after he pulled out onto West Burnside.

But Houze also contended that police should have known Hennessee's surveillance was part of a campaign "to discredit, subvert, harass and ultimately cause the firing of David Adelman."

Rick Adelman, David's father and the Houston Rockets head coach, also testified and admitted that he was so concerned about Lekas that he met with him for 90 minutes last September.

"I thought I could reason with him," Rick Adelman said. "He basically told me David should not be coaching at the high school and he would do everything he could to get him fired."

"I have seen many disgruntled parents over the years," the Rockets' coach later wrote to Lekas in an e-mail, "but I have never seen anyone as vindictive as you."

Clearly, Lekas is insane*, but if there's a lesson here it's this: in the future, if David Adelman wants to have a few pops, let somebody else drive. Even O.J. Simpson had Kato Kaelin to take him to McDonald's.

* Not a medical opinion, just speculation.