It can be easy for us football fans to get carried away and forget that its just a game. There are more important things in life.
RIP Sean, your family are in my thoughts.
A gruesome and unexpected death. May the angels speed him to His rest.
That’s a shame 
Like him or dislike him, he was still just a young man. What a senseless loss… It’s sad for his family, his girlfriend and his one year old child.
Very sad- I can’t recall ever hearing of someone dying of a gunshot to the leg, before yesterday I didn’t know that was even possible…
I’m a Skins fan. I was at the last game he played, he walked off the field in front of us. This all happened so fast. He was the same age as my little sister, who has a daughter just a bit older than his daughter. Sundays game is going to be surreal. I can’t imagine not going though.
He was hit in the groin area. It struck his femoral artery. Even with surgery they couldn’t stop all the bleeding. Even if he lived there was a chance of brain damage due to blood loss.
What a mindless, pointless tragedy. I remember watching the 2004 NFL draft in which he was the fifth pick overall, and the joyful reaction of the contingent of 'Skins fans at Madison Square Garden. They got the man they wanted and Sean Taylor proved a significant asset for the team, making the Pro Bowl last year. Even better, he was determined to continue to improve as a player.
What really hurts about this situation is how Taylor was growing and maturing, both as a player and as a person. After a few regrettable incidents on and off the field, he seemed to be turning over a new leaf, even cutting off ties to some of the trouble-making friends and acquaintances from his past. (It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out that it was a spurned former associate who shot him.) The final irony is that Sean Taylor, who was arrested in 2005 in a gun-related incident, was reportedly reaching for a knife to confront the one or more armed assailants in his home when he was gunned down.
So they all say.
We’ll see what comes out of it.
Regular-ole robbery here is the story. Does a robber usually cut the phone lines, walk into the bedroom, shoot a guy, and leave without taking anything?
There was a “robbery” a week before where a guy, supposedly, just went threw the drawers, and left a knife on the bed.
Sean Taylor grabbed a machete he had under the bed.
Taylor had a gun charge against him a couple years ago.
Not to mention, “THE U” had a player killed last year.
Whole damn thing smells fishy to me.
It does seem odd that a multi millionaire would not have a security guard or system, especially if there was a burglary a week before. Unless the phone lines caused it to not work.
This does look like a hit and not a burglary; the police have been reluctant to say it’s a robbery. Either way, even if Taylor wasn’t a great person, he was a young guy with a family and it’s very sad.
I concur with your skepticism. And the beautification of Sean Taylor has already begun here in DC. In a year or two at most, he’ll be a Saint, not the guy who grabbed a gun, chased a man and committed aggravated assault with a firearm.
This does not mean that he should have been killed, or deserved it. But I think we’ll learn he was not the innocent that he’s being portrayed.
hit a man with it.felony record
He was already pretty, so you probably meant beatification.
I’d never heard of him until last night, when the coach and some players were being interviewed about the shooting. I wondered why the snippets I saw were all about the tragedy of the event and not a single word about what a good guy he was, or his talent, etc. It was really noticeable, the lack of good words about the man. That makes it even more sad.
At first reading I read that as meaning “the University of Miami took out a hit last year,” not that “a player for ‘The U’ was murdered last year.” :eek:
Word.
Yeah, the best anyone could say about him was “he’s changed since he had his kid”.
I’m not here to judge the sincerity of such a statement.
Joe Gibbs this morning was just saying, “he was a great football player. Loved playing. Born to play football.”
That’s what I was going to say. I’ve been seeing the reports on ESPN all day and they have restrained themselves from any speculation about the cause and have mostly set aside discussion of his past. This is the proper journalistic thing to do, and I respect it, but count me among the many who don’t believe the “apparent burglary” claim that may or not be being pushed by Drew Rosenhaus or anyone else with a vested interest.
Sean Taylor spent his first couple off-seasons away from the team “working out” with his fellow alums and friends in Miami. He’s had drug and gun related issues and speculation about “character issues” since he was a college player. Too much about this appears to lead to a courting disaster storyline.
Part of the issue with people pressing the “robbery” theory is that it reinforces the mindset that rich athletes need to protect themselves with weapons and propagate the gun culture that surrounds them. Looking at the story of Tank Johnson is exhibit 1A. One would hope that it doesn’t drive too many people to go out and get guns illegally and carry them illegally and unsafely.
Of course, if we find out that this has nothing to do with robbery and more to do with things he was associated with, in the recent or not-so recent past I’m not sure that will put too many peoples minds to rest.
The first thing I thought of when I heard about this was Darrent Williams’s shooting on New Year’s Eve. We start the year with the murder of an NFL player and nearly finish it with the murder of another. Different circumstances, sure, but I am equally saddened by both.
All of the reports on ESPN seem to be stressing the “burglary” or “robbery” angle.
Most burglars that I’ve heard of do not strike when people are at home and do not burst into someone’s bedroom and start shooting to kill. I suppose it was just luck that his fiance and child were spared? Plus if they are robbing the place they would probably take some stuff.
Very strange.
It may have been the cough medicine I was on today…
But I could swear that I was on CNN’s page, and one of their links was “Taylor Death Ruled a Suicide” - the link was only 5 minutes old. I clicked on it, and it took me to just another CNN Sean Taylor/Breakin story.
I clicked “back”, and was going to go into it again and refresh, but,well, I was at work. Work happens, sadly.
-Joe
I have questions about this too, like I said, but I think Trunk’s link said he wasn’t expected to be at home (vague as that is) and was trying to lock the door when he was shot, which could have tipped off an otherwise unknowing robber that he was home. So the robbery version isn’t totally implausible. It still doesn’t really sound like a robbery, with the phone lines being cut, but we’ll see.
I don’t think the robbery angle is logical either, but cutting the phone lines doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for a robbery by a professional robber- in fact it makes sense. An amatuer robber probably wouldn’t do this though. Cutting the lines would keep some alarms from going off.