Former NFL player sought in shooting at entertainers’ house

Stephen Curran

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.

A former Oakland Raiders placekicker is wanted this morning in connection with the Sept. 21 drive-by shooting outside the Las Vegas home of entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, Metro Police said.

Detectives say 31-year-old Cole Murdoch Ford of Tucson fired six shots at the property in the 1600 block of Vegas Drive near Decatur Boulevard, breaking windows and leaving a 12-inch hole in the house.

No one was injured in the shooting, a Metro spokesman said.

Ford was a placekicker for the Raiders from 1995 to 1997 and played college football at the University of Southern California from 1991 to 1994, a USC athletics spokesman said.

Considered a promising college prospect, Ford was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1994 but never played for the team. He joined the Raiders the following year.

David Humm, a former NFL broadcaster and current host of the Raiders pre- and post-game shows, said the photograph of an overweight, disheveled Ford flooding local media does not match the clean-cut player he remembers.

"He was as clean-cut and conservative as you could get," Humm, himself a former Raiders quarterback and Las Vegas resident, said. "They said 'Cole Ford' and I thought, it's not that guy. That's not the guy I remember traveling with."

During his tenure with the Raiders, Ford did little to stand out among a team known for distinctive personalities, Humm said.

And secrets are hard to keep on a tight-knit NFL team, he said.

"You can usually spot if a guy's got a problem," Humm said. "We've had some crazy players on the Raiders, but this guy wasn't one of them."

Ford's career effectively ended in 1997, when a missed field goal in Tampa Bay cost the Raiders a spot in the NFL playoffs.

He then played one game for the Buffalo Bills but has since lost touch with most of his NFL acquaintances, Humm said.

The Tucson Police Department was contacted shortly after the shooting and confirmed that Ford had lived in Arizona, Sgt. Marco Barboa, a spokesman for Tucson police, said.

Based on interviews with Ford's acquaintances, it is likely he has left the area, Barboa said.

"As it stands now, we don't believe he's in the Tucson area today," he said.

Ford now faces two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and six counts of discharging a weapon from a moving vehicle, according to a Metro statement.

He has no prior convictions in either Tucson or Las Vegas, spokesmen for the departments said Wednesday.

Capt. Gary Schofield of Metro's Gang Crimes Bureau would not comment on a possible motive for the crime. Investigators initially deemed it a hate crime, based on information from a witness who told officers he heard the driver yelling, "We need to get these mother (expletive) Siegfried and Roy out of our country."

Detectives later ruled the incident was not a hate crime because the derogatory phrase was aimed at the entertainers and not at an entire minority group, Jose Montoya, a Metro spokesman, said.

Ford is a white man, 6 foot 2 inches, 210 pounds with brown hair and eyes.

He was last seen driving a 2000 Chevy Astro van with Nevada license plates. Metro urges anyone with information about the shooting to contact Crime Stoppers at 385-5555.

Ford is considered armed and dangerous.