TAMPA, Fla. — Darryl Strawberry could end up in jail if and when the troubled baseball star surfaces from his latest break from house arrest, authorities said Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office said prosecutors will push to have Strawberry sent to prison, saying the multiple chances he's had for freedom on the outside have not worked.
"We were seeking prison time on his last violation," said Pam Bondi, an assistant state attorney. "We certainly haven't changed our opinion."
Strawberry, 39, disappeared Thursday night from the residential drug treatment center where he was serving two years of house arrest. The suspended New York Yankee never returned from a drug counseling session to the apartment he shares with a roommate at the facility.
It was the second time he's left the facility and the third time he's violated the terms of his 1999 sentence on drug possession and solicitation of prostitution.
Sunday, Joe Papy, the head of the Florida Department of Corrections' regional office, said there still was no word on Strawberry's whereabouts.
At the treatment facility, a counselor who declined to comment on Strawberry because it would be a violation of federal privacy laws, said those who know him are "as concerned as everybody else" about him. Besides battling his addiction, Strawberry is also undergoing treatment for colon cancer.
Even workers at local medical examiners offices said Sunday they were keeping an eye out for Strawberry.
He last left the center in October for a drug binge with a friend. But that time, Strawberry turned himself in the next morning. The fact that he has been gone for days now worries those close to him.
After Strawberry's October arrest, prosecutors sought to send him to prison, telling Circuit Court Judge Florence Foster that Strawberry was repeatedly violating the breaks that had been given him and had faced no punishment for his actions.
Prosecutors recommended sending Strawberry to the North Florida Reception Center, a prison in Lake Butler, about 160 miles north of Tampa, which has a hospital where Strawberry could get cancer treatments.
Instead, Strawberry was kept in jail for less than a month and fitted with an electronic monitor. At the time, he said he felt having the monitor would help keep him from straying.
Bondi said in light of the new violation, prosecutors aren't likely to change their minds.
"He was given every opportunity and he has all the resources," Bondi said.