Crime & Police

Wellington Crash Victim Scott Wilson, in His Own Words

Scott Wilson, the 23-year-old Wellington native who died in February after multimillionaire polo mogul John Goodman crashed into his car, was an aspiring mechanical engineer and a beloved son and older brother.But he was also a typical college grad, a sort of absent-minded scientist who loved basketball and videogames and...
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Scott Wilson, the 23-year-old Wellington native who died in February after multimillionaire polo mogul John Goodman crashed into his car, was an aspiring mechanical engineer and a beloved son and older brother.

But he was also a typical college grad, a sort of absent-minded scientist who loved basketball and videogames and dealt poker to pay the bills.

“What about me?” Wilson wrote on his Facebook page. “I’m an unemployed
mechanical engineer. I own a Hyundai, and I have a shit-eating grin.”

“Just knowing him, it was hard not to laugh,” says Paul Healy, Wilson’s former roommate at the University of Central Florida. “He was really eccentric.”

Introduce him to a girl and Wilson would be endearingly klutzy — trying not
to spill a glass of water or get his shirt caught on a chair. “You
could just sit back and watch and be really entertained for like, 20
minutes,” Healy says.

Sometimes, Wilson, who was “incredibly book-smart,” stayed up until 5 a.m. playing videogames, Healy says. He’d shoot baskets with you at 2 a.m.
if you asked.

Although the crash that killed him involved alcohol — law enforcement authorities allege that Goodman was drunk when he plowed his Bentley through a stop sign and broad-sided Wilson’s Hyundai — Wilson wasn’t a big drinker. He was always the designated driver, Healy says.

“If a girl got real sick, he’d be holding her hair back,” Healy says. “He was the honorable one out of all of us.”

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