Former Detroit Lion owes $300,000 in support

[TexasStooge]

By Wayne Loewe, Court TV

LANSING, Mich. (Court TV) — Former Detroit Lions safety Bennie Blades was charged Tuesday with failing to pay almost $300,000 in child support.

Blades, 37, was charged with failure to pay support and desertion-abandonment, both felonies, according to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox. The non-support charge is punishable by up to four years in prison while child abandonment carries a sentence of one to three years.

A warrant has been issued for Blades' arrest in Florida's Broward County, where he now lives.

Blades, who fathered six children with six different women, now works as a substitute teacher in Florida. He said he thought the money was being deducted from his salary, adding that virtually all the money he earns goes to support two other children in Michigan and three in Florida.

Michigan officials said Blades owes $298,259 in back child support for a pre-teen daughter, accumulated over six years.

Blades, an All-American safety for the national championship 1987 University of Miami, was the third overall pick of the 1988 pro football draft. He went to the Detroit Lions, where he starred for nine seasons before the Seattle Seahawks signed him in 1997. He was injured and released by Seattle a year later.