Sean Miller lay sprawled out in the middle of Harrison Street that chilly December night — his face mangled, asphalt ground into his knees and chest. He lay there a vibrant kid who moments earlier in the best shape of his life, and all he could think was, ‘I’m going to die.’

Next week, Miller will bask in the Miami sun with his Syracuse track and field teammates, and he’ll remember where he was three months ago.

How his mom couldn’t even recognize his face. How he ran until he bled to get back here. How his coach now calls him Superman.

Let’s start with what got Sean Miller here in the first place. And, really, it all began with board games.

‘I would be playing my family, and I would cheat in Monopoly,’ he said. ‘I just have to win.’

That’s what brought Miller to Syracuse — that competitive fury that wouldn’t let him be satisfied with just playing basketball at the gym. When Miller arrived as a freshman he decided to walk on to SU’s track team and trained furiously to make a name for himself.

That’s where he stood in the wee hours of Dec. 13, poised to have the finest indoor track season of his life, fresh off a night of relaxing with friends on Marshall Street.

Miller planned to head to one friend’s Madison Street apartment with his buddies and walked alone, ahead of the group. As he crossed the parking lot behind Marshall Square Mall, Miller noticed a group of kids fighting around a car. Miller walked casually in front of the car to avoid the skirmish.

Then, as Miller recalls, ‘He just floors it, and I had no chance to get out of the way.’

The driver, Richard Pierson Jr., 22, sped out of the parking lot with Miller trapped under the car. Pierson turned left onto East Adams Street and right onto South Crouse Avenue with Miller screaming for help under the vehicle. Bracing himself with his hands, the road tore through the flesh on Miller’s palms.

‘It was surreal,’ Miller said. ‘I didn’t think it was happening. I was trying to keep my head up because I didn’t want to hit the ground because I’d obviously probably die.’

Pierson eventually stopped on Harrison Street, near Irving Avenue, and the three passengers pried Miller from the car’s underbelly. Surprisingly, Miller rose to his feet and sat down on the curb while friends comforted him and police arrested Pierson on a charge of reckless endangerment.

Before the ambulance came to whisk Miller away, he looked at his knees, once covered by jeans.

‘I could see white, past the skin to the fat,’ he said. ‘If you saw me that day, you’d think my face was never going to be the same. My right ear was black. It looked like a dog had been chewing on it.’

Michelle Miller awoke to the phone ringing.

The voice on the other line, a Syracuse University representative, told Miller of her son’s accident. Moments later, she jumped in her car and drove four hours from Montoursville, Pa., to University Hospital.

Her son — the one who’d always listen to her problems, her ‘backbone’ for so long — was in rough shape. The worst burn wounds were on his right thigh, left knee and right shoulder. He also had road burns on his chest and back.

‘Everyone told me he should be dead,’ said Michelle Miller, who was at her son’s side through his entire 10-day hospital stay.

Miller was eventually transferred from the emergency room to the burn unit, where he endured a torturous recovery. Every day, he’d sit in a tub of warm water while nurses used a metal device to scrape asphalt and dead skin from his wounds.

‘It would just hurt like hell,’ Miller said. ‘Say you’ve got a carpet burn. You know how when the water hits it, it hurts a little bit? This one just hurt so bad.’

‘He was unbelievably tough,’ said nurse practitioner Bill Myers. ‘When we get someone like Sean who has an agenda, they do very well.’

While the lesser burns healed quickly, Miller’s deepest wounds on his thigh, knee and shoulder required a skin graft. Dr. Margherite Bonaventura took a patch of skin about eight inches long from Miller’s left thigh to cover those more serious wounds.

Throughout his recovery, teammates and friends came to see Miller. He’d mask his pain, not wanting them to see him upset. Once, Miller did break down. A priest visited him to administer communion and delivered this message: ‘Someone was watching you.’

Of everything well-wishers gave Miller — television, video games, flowers, comfort — perhaps the brightest contribution came when his track coach, Andrew Roberts, strolled in wearing a Santa hat. Roberts handed Miller a full scholarship for the Spring Semester, one that would help Miller’s family offset medical costs.

Once he left the miserable isolation of the hospital, Miller set his mind on preparing for the outdoor track season. At home, he lifted weights before his legs healed. When he arrived back at Syracuse, he jogged on his own before trainers cleared him to practice. Sometimes, when Miller ran too hard, blood flowed from the still-healing wounds on his legs.

‘I need you to not go crazy here,’ Roberts told him.

But there was no slowing Miller. Once he was cleared to practice with the team, Miller, though still out of shape, was back in true competitive form.

‘If you’re running next to him in a workout,’ Roberts said, ‘if he’s with you at the end of that rep, you’re not running away from Sean. He will run you into the ground and beat you. That’s where you see his fight.

‘He’s definitely not in that place where he’s now all of a sudden going to be the average, flighty kid and see himself as invincible. He doesn’t. Not anymore. Or maybe he does. I call him Superman.’

On Feb. 24, Miller ran in his first meet since the accident. He finished sixth of seven runners in the 500 meter run at a small event at Seton Hall. His outdoor return comes March 16 during a meet at the end of a week of training in Miami.

As Miller toes the line, he’ll glance at the pink scars on his shoulder that will never disappear and the asphalt that’s forever embedded in his knee. He’ll think of the hell he endured, how teammates told him they would’ve quit, how he refused to.

‘There are always cases where people feel like they didn’t give 100 percent,’ he said. ‘But when I’m done, I know I’m going to know I gave 100 percent for every race. Hell, I couldn’t be running. I feel like it’s a gift that I get to run now.’

Published on March 4, 2002 at 12:00 pm