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."
