Moore Is Still Feeling the Effects of Punch

Steve Moore says he has been forever changed by Todd Bertuzzi’s blind-sided punch to his head in an NHL game last season.

He is still feeling the effects from the March 8 attack when Moore and the Colorado Avalanche played Bertuzzi and the Vancouver Canucks. And to make matters worse, Moore is upset that Bertuzzi was able to reach a plea bargain with prosecutors that made it impossible for Moore to be present for the sentencing hearing Wednesday.

Bertuzzi won’t serve any jail time, and if he performs 80 hours of community service and meets his probation requirements, he won’t have a criminal record.

Moore’s hockey future is much cloudier. He declined to go into detail about his condition, but said doctors have told him the resumption of his playing career is uncertain.

“I still suffer from significant post-concussion symptoms which prevent me from living a fully normal life,” Moore said Thursday. “I’m just not the same person I was.”

Bertuzzi pleaded guilty and received a year’s probation in which he is not allowed to play in a game against Moore.

The Avalanche forward was hospitalized with a broken neck, facial cuts, post-concussion symptoms and amnesia after Bertuzzi slugged and jumped him from behind, driving him headfirst into the ice.

Tim Danson, Moore’s lawyer, said he and his client weren’t passing judgment on Bertuzzi’s sentence.

But Danson has asked the British Columbia attorney general to investigate why the plea bargain was allowed to proceed without Moore in court.

Attorney General Geoff Plant said he was satisfied with the actions of the prosecution.

“There will be no further investigation,” Plant said.

Danson said he learned of the plea bargain Monday, and was given only one day’s notice of the new court date, not enough time for Moore to get to Vancouver.

Moore wanted the chance to personally read his victim impact statement, but instead it was delivered on his behalf.

“For many months I was expecting that I would get a chance to tell my story, but they unexpectedly made a plea bargain, which I unexpectedly first learned about through the media,” Moore said. “This was pulled out from under me at the last minute, it’s disappointing.”

Danson suggested that if Bertuzzi felt remorse for assaulting Moore, he would have ensured the victim would have been in court.

“I have never received a personal apology or a private apology,” Moore said. “Apparently there was an apology [Wednesday] but I wasn’t able to be there.”

Soccer

Luis Fernando Montoya, coach for Colombian club champion Once Caldas, is paralyzed from the neck down after being shot during an attempted robbery, doctors said.

Police reported the arrest of two men and two women suspected in the shooting.

Montoya, who led Once Caldas to this year’s South American club championship, “has not shown any movement of the body and is using a ventilator for breathing,” doctors said in a statement.

Montoya, 47, was shot twice Wednesday while protecting his wife from robbers outside their home in Caldas, 170 miles northwest of Bogota.

He is in intensive care at a hospital in Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city.

Police identified the suspected shooter as Javier Alonso Calle, 37, and said he was arrested along with an accomplice.

Authorities have also detained two women who allegedly followed Herrera back to her home after seeing her withdraw cash from an ATM.

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Players on the U.S. soccer team made a new proposal that the U.S. Soccer Federation called inadequate, and it remains uncertain whether inexperienced players will be used instead of the regulars for a World Cup qualifier in February.

The players association made a new proposal Monday, union head Mark Levinstein said, but it wasn’t to the liking of the U.S. federation.

USSF spokesman Jim Moorhouse said that his organization calculated the union plan at a 108% increase, saying players on the national team earned $10.4 million from 1999-2002 and are asking for $22 million. Moorhouse said management’s latest proposal would earn players $14.4 million.

The USSF says that if a new contract is not agreed to by Feb. 1, it will use players who are not members of the union for the Americans’ opener in the final round of World Cup qualifying, at Trinidad and Tobago on Feb. 9.

The union says it represents all players who have appeared in a game with the national team or been invited to a national team training camp.

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The German soccer federation warned potential spectators against buying World Cup tickets from unauthorized agents, saying they could be prevented from entering stadiums for the matches.

The federation, which is especially fearful of fraud on the Internet, won a court ruling it hopes is the first step to limiting ticket problems for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The Frankfurt court barred an unauthorized German firm, which had been advertising “VIP” packages at inflated prices for the Confederations Cup in June, from selling tickets. The federation saw the ruling as a precedent for the upcoming World Cup.

“Our goal is to protect fans from being misled by dubious offers. All we can do is urgently warn fans off freeloaders, the majority operating on the Internet,” said Horst Schmidt, vice president of Germany’s World Cup Organizing Committee.

Jurisprudence

Austrian ski great Hermann Maier has settled out of court with a German insurance company over the 2001 road accident that nearly ended his career, his lawyer said.

Karl Heinz Klee declined to reveal the terms of the settlement between Maier and the insurer of the German driver who was found negligent in the accident.

Maier underwent seven hours of surgery after his motorcycle crashed with the car near his hometown of Flachau in August 2001.

Doctors inserted screws and a titanium rod into his leg.