Derby Jockey Michael Baze Was Due in Court on Thursday
The strange case of Michael Baze is getting stranger.
The jockey was found dead in his car outside Churchill Downs on Tuesday, and the word today is that Baze had a rather important date on Thursday.
According to The Courier-Journal, the 24-year-old jockey was scheduled to appear in Jefferson District Court for a preliminary hearing on a cocaine charge stemming from this past November.
The preliminary autopsy performed on Baze showed no anatomical cause of death, but deputy Jefferson County coroner Jim Wesley said toxicology tests will take about three weeks to come back.
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Baze was supposedly going to look into rehabilitation or counseling after his arrest in November, and his attorney, John Decamillis, told him this was going to happen one way or another.
?I told him that was going to be not only recommended but court-ordered,? said Decamillis. ?Unfortunately for Michael, we never got to that point. He was never ordered by any court to do it here (in Louisville), and we never got the opportunity to help him that way, and he never helped himself.?
Decamillis also said that he had a hard time getting in touch with Baze in recent months, but that Baze assured him last week that he was planning on making his court date.
Baze failed a breathalyzer test back in March, which led to a $500 fine. That was the only infraction for drugs or alcohol he ever earned on the racetrack, but he did have two DUI arrests on his record.
Baze rode Nehro to a second-place finish at the Louisiana Derby in late March, but he was replaced Corey Nakatani for the Arkansas and Kentucky Derbys. Nehro finished second in the latter.
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