Chiefs Jovan Belcher was one sick son of B**** - Page 31

ShowtimeSBMVP · 01:20 AM

Exclusive: As troubles at home simmered, Chiefs tried to help Jovan Belcher
Police said the team was providing counseling to Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins. But Belcher, before taking his own life in the parking lot of the Chiefs’ practice facility, said it wasn’t enough to fix their problems.
By CHRISTINE VENDEL
The Kansas City Star

Seconds after fatally shooting his longtime girlfriend, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher leaned over her in their master bathroom, said he was sorry and kissed her on the forehead.

His mother, who heard gunfire as she stood in the kitchen, rushed to her son’s bedroom and watched his remorseful goodbye.

Belcher apologized to his mother, kissed his 3-month-old daughter and fled his rented home in the 5400 block of Crysler Avenue in his Bentley.

The Star learned those details and others from multiple police sources Monday as officers continued their investigation into why Belcher, 25, killed his live-in girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, 22, on Saturday morning. Arguments over relationship and financial issues had simmered for months between them, according to the sources.

Belcher’s mother, who came from New York to live with her son so the couple could work through their issues, didn’t hear much of the argument. But just before 8 a.m., she heard her son say something to the effect of: “You can’t talk to me like that!”

Then she heard gunfire.

Afterward, Belcher drove to the only place he felt safe — to his other family at Arrowhead Stadium, police said.

As he covered the five miles from his home to the stadium, his violent act weighed on him, police believe.

“He probably realized he had done something and he couldn’t go back,” said Police Sgt. Richard Sharp.

In the parking lot of the practice facility at 1 Arrowhead Drive, Belcher encountered Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli. Belcher stepped out of his Bentley with a gun pointed at his own head, police said.

“I did it,” he said, according to police. “I killed her.”

Club officials knew about the couple’s problems. The Chiefs had provided counseling and “were bending over backward” to help, Sharp said.

But Belcher told Pioli that the assistance wasn’t enough to fix their problems and now, “It was too late.”

When another Chiefs employee arrived, Pioli told him to stay back. Meanwhile Pioli tried to persuade Belcher to lay down the weapon, Sharp said.

Belcher thanked Pioli for everything he had done for him. He asked if he and Clark Hunt would take care of his daughter.

Chiefs Head Coach Romeo Crennel and linebackers coach Gary Gibbs arrived in the parking lot and Belcher reportedly announced, “Guys, I have to do this.”

Crennel tried to dissuade him.

“I was trying to get him to understand that life is not over,” Crennel told The Star. “He still has a chance and let’s get this worked out.’’

As Pioli and Crennel tried to reason with Belcher, the men heard police sirens closing in. Belcher then walked a few steps away with the gun still pointed at his head.

“I got to go,” Belcher reportedly said. “I can’t be here.”

Belcher knelt behind a vehicle and made the sign of the cross across his chest before firing a single bullet into his head.

Kansas City police believe Belcher killed himself because he was distraught over what he had done to Perkins.

“He cared about her,” Sharp said. “I don’t think he could live with himself.”

The night before the killings, Perkins had attended a concert downtown with friends, and Belcher had “partied” at the Power and Light District, police said. It was unclear when they arrived home, where Belcher’s mother was watching their baby. A woman who answered Belcher’s mother’s cell phone Monday declined to comment.

Detectives don’t know what specifically sparked the argument between the couple at home, but a friend of Perkins told The Star that the couple argued around 1 a.m. Saturday when Perkins returned home from the Trey Songz concert and drinks with friends afterward. Belcher was mad she had stayed out so late, the friend said.

Sometime later, Kansas City police talked with Belcher after finding him asleep in his Bentley on Armour Boulevard. Officers determined he was able to drive himself home. Police believe he arrived home about 7 a.m., well before a 9:30 team meeting. That’s when the yelling began.

Police said youth, immaturity and financial pressures served as a backdrop. During his college years, Belcher allegedly punched a dormitory window because he was upset over a woman.

Autopsies with toxicology tests were performed on both bodies, but results will take weeks, police said. Investigators believe alcohol may have played a role in the argument’s escalation.

Police recovered several legally owned guns from Belcher’s home. Investigators were testing each one, and the gun found with Belcher’s body, against shell casings and bullets they recovered.

Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Monday that Belcher’s mother, who had been staying with the couple, was given temporary custody of the couple’s daughter. But he said it was unclear if the grandmother and baby were still in the Kansas City area.

Perkins, who grew up in Texas, met Belcher, who grew up in New York, through a cousin, Whitney Golden Charles, the wife of Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles. Perkins moved to Kansas City in 2010 to be with Belcher. Her relatives learned of her death from the news, police said. A woman who answered the phone at a relative’s home Monday declined to comment.

Monday afternoon, the family issued a statement that spelled Perkins’ first name with a double s, though she spelled it with one on her Facebook page:

“On behalf of the Perkins Family, we appreciate the outpouring of love and concern for our Kassandra ‘Kasi’ Perkins. Our hearts are truly broken for Kasi was a beloved daughter, granddaughter, sister, mother, cousin and friend.…

“Please keep us in your hearts and prayers as well as the Belcher family for two lives were loss. Again we thank you for your support, our wish is for Kasi to be remembered for the love she shared with us all. Kasi will be truly missed!”

Jamaal Charles also released a statement: “Our family has suffered a personal tragic loss.… As this is a very tough time for our family, I ask that we are respected as we grieve. Kassandra was not only family, but a friend and a loving mother. As my actual family and my Kansas City Chiefs family have been altered forever, we ask that you keep us and most importantly their child in prayer. Thank you all for your continued support.”

Later Monday, Belcher’s somber relatives provided statements outside of Belcher’s boyhood home in New York. Yamiesse Lawrence, a cousin of Belcher’s, said the weekend’s events were an “inconceivable tragedy.”

“As a family, no words can express the sorrow we feel over the loss of Jovan and Kasandra,” Lawrence read aloud.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/04...#storylink=cpy

burt · 12-04-2012, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 38yrsfan

I'm Spartacus!

I AM THE WILLIAM BUCKLEY OF JAZZ!!!!

BIG_DADDY · 12-04-2012, 02:35 PM

For all we know due to the selfish nature of her parents Zoe may be better off going down this path. This was very much a tragedy but there are tons of bad things that happen every day. I am not sure why some people feel the need to spend unlimited amounts of time mocking those that have already paid the price of their life for their own selfish ways.

**loochy** · 12-04-2012, 02:55 PM

Hey guys, remember that time when Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide in front of Crennel and Pioli? Boy, that was quite a shocker.

whoman69 · 12-04-2012, 03:00 PM

This is not a workplace issue. Every personal problem can't be the fault of the Chiefs. It sounds like the Chiefs were aware he had issues. How deep they knew those issues ran is hard to say. This is the fault of Jovan Belcher, not anyone with the Chiefs. Unless it comes out they were aware he was homicidal, it can't be their issue. If he was receiving therapy, they can't even discuss issues coming out of that therapy that with the Chiefs. It's sad that this young man was driven to murder, but the only difference to Rae Carruth is that Belcher was not pre-meditated.

burt · 12-04-2012, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loochy

Hey guys, remember that time when Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide in front of Crennel and Pioli? Boy, that was quite a shocker.

too soon.....

**loochy** · 12-04-2012, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by burt

too soon.....

I was trying to steer this back to the subject and away from the 3 way competition about who is tougher and who owns more black music products.

burt · 12-04-2012, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loochy

I was trying to steer this back to the subject and away from the 3 way competition about who is tougher and who owns more black music products.

K...I am tougher...Wheel has the better black music product collection....and bad shit happens.

ShowtimeSBMVP · 12-04-2012, 03:34 PM

This story appears in the Dec. 10, 2012, issue of Sports Illustrated. Buy the digital version of the magazine here.

For a Thanksgiving video on the Chiefs' website, fourth-year linebacker Jovan Belcher smiled into the camera and shared what he was thankful for: "First and foremost, God, family and friends just keeping me focused." To friends in private, his recent messages were more complex and unrecognizable as having come from the same person.

Reggie Paramoure, who played on defense with Belcher at the University of Maine, was texting with his former teammate last Friday night. "I see yall boys aint doing too well," Paramoure wrote, referring to the Chiefs' 1-10 start. "Wats goen on wit u besides ball."

"Yea man," Belcher replied, "our 'o' can't even put 7 in the board for us, but everything good bro, baby momma crazy but I have a little girl almost 3 month man and she's a blessing, she makes me smile on the worst day."

"Daughter!" Paramoure wrote, and then jokingly suggested that Belcher better have a gun ready to ward off future boyfriends. "Yea man," Belcher responded, "I got about 8 guns now, from hand Gunz to assault rifles for her little bf's."

The previous week's game had been the first this season that Belcher, 25, did not start. "I'm good bro," he wrote, toward the end of the exchange, "just trying to stay on the field and get this new contract but this losing s**t ain't helping."

On Saturday morning Belcher used one of his handguns to kill Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his daughter, before killing himself.

"Just the night before, I was checking up on him," Paramoure says. "That's what's so surreal, that I was literally speaking to him the night before." Belcher was generally a quiet man, says Paramoure, but, "he was very emotional. I believe that's what made him so good [on the field]."

In late October, when Belcher was in West Babylon for his high school's homecoming game, he avoided the sideline, lest he be asked to give a speech. "To get him loud," says Ollie Roy, 30, a longtime friend from the area, "you'd really have to piss him off."

It could, however, be done.

According to Steven Barker, a former defensive back at Maine, Belcher once had to get stitches in his thumb after he punched a glass panel during an argument with Jessica Higgins, his long-term college girlfriend. The team was forced to run as punishment. "They had their arguments and fights," Barker says, "but nothing crazy." It was, as far as anyone knows, an isolated incident. Most of the time, Belcher was the ideal student-athlete.

Still, Cosgrove knew better than to presume that he could see everything inside his misfit toys. "Everyone has a dark side," he said on Saturday on Maine's campus. "I do know that for all Jovan's successes, he didn't have successful relationships with women."

Kasandra Perkins, 22, was, technically, a girlfriend. But for all intents and purposes, she was a spouse. Belcher and Perkins referred to one another as husband and wife, and Belcher's mother called Perkins her daughter. Belcher brought Perkins and her relatives to a Fourth of July block party in West Babylon last year. On Matthews Avenue, the block where Belcher grew up, it was a big deal.

West Babylon is 80 percent white, but a small geographic triangle that residents refer to as "the CMG" -- because it contains Commander, Matthews and Gordon avenues -- is overwhelmingly African-American, and extremely close knit. Bringing a significant other from out of town to the CMG really meant something.

Roy saw Belcher at the July 4th party and again on the block this October. Belcher was friendly -- he knocked on Roy's door, as always -- but, to Roy's surprise, did not mention his daughter, Zoey, born on Sept. 11 in Kansas City. People who knew Belcher and Perkins in Kansas City had seen the cracks developing in their relationship.

Brianne York, 21, befriended Perkins at Metropolitan Community College-Blue River in Independence, Mo., and noticed that football and a new child were straining Belcher's and Perkins's relationship. Perkins would mention, unhappily, that Belcher was often out late doing "team bonding stuff," she says. According to another of Perkins's friends, Devene Dunson-Rusher, team bonding sometimes meant drinking, and Perkins was uneasy with some of the Chiefs players with whom Belcher was carousing. Before Zoey was born, says Dunson-Rusher, Belcher wanted Perkins to get a job. After the birth, according to York, Belcher was upset when she didn't clean the house. According to Belcher's friends, Perkins wanted to upgrade their lifestyle and move to a different house. Perkins did move to another house, but not with Belcher.

She left with Zoey and moved first into the home of Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, whose wife is Perkins' cousin, and then in with her family in North Texas. But the couple reconciled, and Perkins moved back in with Belcher last month. Belcher's mother had just moved to Kansas City from West Babylon to help care for Zoey and take some pressure off the couple. Briefly, by outward appearances anyway, the two were happy again.

Belcher and Perkins, York says, enjoyed going to gun ranges together. Once, when York was at the couple's house, she noticed a handgun on the kitchen table. "I guess they forgot it was out," she says. Dunson-Rusher recalls once seeing a rifle leaning against a chair in the room she called Belcher's man cave. Again, underscoring how wide the gulf can be between one perception of a man and another, every one of the West Babylon friends of Belcher's who spoke with SI had no idea he was interested in guns.

According to a law enforcement official close to the investigation -- and contrary to published reports -- Belcher spent Friday night "partying" with another woman at the Power and Light District, a bar area in downtown K.C. He returned home between 6:30 and 7 a.m., at which point he and Perkins argued. Then, with his own mother in the house, Belcher used a handgun to shoot the mother of his baby girl nine times. He then drove to the Chiefs' practice facility in a Bentley so new it had temporary plates.

At the facility, Belcher jumped out of the car holding a different handgun and encountered general manager Scott Pioli, who was heading into the building. Belcher thanked Pioli for giving him a chance as an undrafted player. He then confessed that he had shot his girlfriend and insisted that he was not going to jail. He asked to have head coach Romeo Crennel sent out. Crennel emerged, and Belcher thanked him too.

Crennel and Pioli pleaded with Belcher to put the gun down, but Belcher was beyond coach's orders. He turned around and walked about 20 feet. He took a knee -- as football players do at the end of games from the time they're in peewee -- and shot himself in the head.

Inevitably, those who knew Belcher were left wondering what they could have done. Before she blocked her Twitter feed, Higgins, Belcher's girlfriend at Maine, wrote, "I just can't help but to think what if I didn't miss that phone call." Said Jets defensive end Mike DeVito, who hosted Belcher on his recruiting trip to Maine and played alongside him for three seasons, "I wish I had stayed in contact with him, because you'll always wonder, could you have helped?" Said Jarrod Gomes, who played safety in college beside Belcher, "We can't believe it. ... We're trying to figure out what was really going on in his life."

If Belcher needed urgent help, none of the people who spoke with SI knew it. "I'd never seen any outbursts," said Willis Miles, Belcher's uncle.

A video on the Kansas City Star website shows Belcher sprawled on the floor of a church, patiently tutoring an eight-year-old in reading. On Belcher's public Facebook page, he "liked" photography and Family Guy. As professional athletes go, he seemed so knowable. But "likes" can go only so far in revealing the true substance of a person and just what is going on in his mind. Now, all who knew Belcher -- from his mother, Cheryl Shepard, who was to return to New York with her orphaned granddaughter, to the player's friends in Kansas City, Maine and West Babylon -- are left to wonder who they really knew.

Chris Almonte, a 23-year-old father of six and a friend of Belcher's from the CMG, was working in his yard when he got a phone call with the news on Saturday morning. It was so at odds with his conception of Belcher that all Almonte could think to do was to bury the phone in the hole he had been digging, as if that would make the news go away.

Like Cosgrove, Belcher's high school coach, Albert Ritacco, has been around football players long enough to understand what he cannot understand. "I can't find anything negative to say from the four years I coached him," Ritacco says. "But trying to understand what goes on in a man's life outside of football is a little different. I don't know why things happen in life. Who knows?"

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...#ixzz2E7ahPJyJ

Sorter · 12-04-2012, 03:46 PM

WV · 12-04-2012, 04:09 PM

Nice article chiefsando's..thanks.

**Shogun** · 12-04-2012, 04:13 PM

Offense cant even put 7 on the board. True dat Jovan.

CaliforniaChief · 12-04-2012, 04:20 PM

Just more proof that Brady Quinn was right on the money. How much do we really know the people in our lives?

The Iron Chief · 12-04-2012, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaliforniaChief

Just more proof that Brady Quinn was right on the money. How much do we really know the people in our lives?

I've gotta admit I'm really shocked over listening to a couple of Quinns interviews after the incident.
He speaks well and sounds intelligent.
I always thought anything beyond vitamin milkshakes and doing laps around the track was beyond him.

Hmmm but did you listen to him I mean really really listen to him.
Was he reaching out with his hidden feelings that nobody meaning he doesn't communicate with the rest of the world anymore.
Its all that crazy facebook and twitter..when he said that he seemed to tense up.
Is there some underlying issues within him.
I sure hope his friends in the locker room are on this.

Maybe I'm reading into this..or not..

**Rausch** · 12-04-2012, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Iron Chief

Hmmm but did you listen to him I mean really really listen to him.
Was he reaching out with his hidden feelings that nobody meaning he doesn't communicate with the rest of the world anymore.
Its all that crazy facebook and twitter..when he said that he seemed to tense up.
Is there some underlying issues within him.
I sure hope his friends in the locker room are on this.

Maybe I'm reading into this..or not..

I don't understand any of this...

el borracho · 12-04-2012, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

who said he had financial problems?

she was failing classes he paid for. she quit her job.

maybe he wasnt ok with the way she spent his money

the story above, "Arguments over relationship and financial issues had simmered for months between them, according to the sources."

12-04-2012, 12:57 AM
ShowtimeSBMVP Chiefs Join Date: Feb 2009 Casino cash: $1206009	Jovan Belcher was one sick son of B**** Exclusive: As troubles at home simmered, Chiefs tried to help Jovan Belcher Police said the team was providing counseling to Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins. But Belcher, before taking his own life in the parking lot of the Chiefs’ practice facility, said it wasn’t enough to fix their problems. By CHRISTINE VENDEL The Kansas City Star Seconds after fatally shooting his longtime girlfriend, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher leaned over her in their master bathroom, said he was sorry and kissed her on the forehead. His mother, who heard gunfire as she stood in the kitchen, rushed to her son’s bedroom and watched his remorseful goodbye. Belcher apologized to his mother, kissed his 3-month-old daughter and fled his rented home in the 5400 block of Crysler Avenue in his Bentley. The Star learned those details and others from multiple police sources Monday as officers continued their investigation into why Belcher, 25, killed his live-in girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, 22, on Saturday morning. Arguments over relationship and financial issues had simmered for months between them, according to the sources. Belcher’s mother, who came from New York to live with her son so the couple could work through their issues, didn’t hear much of the argument. But just before 8 a.m., she heard her son say something to the effect of: “You can’t talk to me like that!” Then she heard gunfire. Afterward, Belcher drove to the only place he felt safe — to his other family at Arrowhead Stadium, police said. As he covered the five miles from his home to the stadium, his violent act weighed on him, police believe. “He probably realized he had done something and he couldn’t go back,” said Police Sgt. Richard Sharp. In the parking lot of the practice facility at 1 Arrowhead Drive, Belcher encountered Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli. Belcher stepped out of his Bentley with a gun pointed at his own head, police said. “I did it,” he said, according to police. “I killed her.” Club officials knew about the couple’s problems. The Chiefs had provided counseling and “were bending over backward” to help, Sharp said. But Belcher told Pioli that the assistance wasn’t enough to fix their problems and now, “It was too late.” When another Chiefs employee arrived, Pioli told him to stay back. Meanwhile Pioli tried to persuade Belcher to lay down the weapon, Sharp said. Belcher thanked Pioli for everything he had done for him. He asked if he and Clark Hunt would take care of his daughter. Chiefs Head Coach Romeo Crennel and linebackers coach Gary Gibbs arrived in the parking lot and Belcher reportedly announced, “Guys, I have to do this.” Crennel tried to dissuade him. “I was trying to get him to understand that life is not over,” Crennel told The Star. “He still has a chance and let’s get this worked out.’’ As Pioli and Crennel tried to reason with Belcher, the men heard police sirens closing in. Belcher then walked a few steps away with the gun still pointed at his head. “I got to go,” Belcher reportedly said. “I can’t be here.” Belcher knelt behind a vehicle and made the sign of the cross across his chest before firing a single bullet into his head. Kansas City police believe Belcher killed himself because he was distraught over what he had done to Perkins. “He cared about her,” Sharp said. “I don’t think he could live with himself.” The night before the killings, Perkins had attended a concert downtown with friends, and Belcher had “partied” at the Power and Light District, police said. It was unclear when they arrived home, where Belcher’s mother was watching their baby. A woman who answered Belcher’s mother’s cell phone Monday declined to comment. Detectives don’t know what specifically sparked the argument between the couple at home, but a friend of Perkins told The Star that the couple argued around 1 a.m. Saturday when Perkins returned home from the Trey Songz concert and drinks with friends afterward. Belcher was mad she had stayed out so late, the friend said. Sometime later, Kansas City police talked with Belcher after finding him asleep in his Bentley on Armour Boulevard. Officers determined he was able to drive himself home. Police believe he arrived home about 7 a.m., well before a 9:30 team meeting. That’s when the yelling began. Police said youth, immaturity and financial pressures served as a backdrop. During his college years, Belcher allegedly punched a dormitory window because he was upset over a woman. Autopsies with toxicology tests were performed on both bodies, but results will take weeks, police said. Investigators believe alcohol may have played a role in the argument’s escalation. Police recovered several legally owned guns from Belcher’s home. Investigators were testing each one, and the gun found with Belcher’s body, against shell casings and bullets they recovered. Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Monday that Belcher’s mother, who had been staying with the couple, was given temporary custody of the couple’s daughter. But he said it was unclear if the grandmother and baby were still in the Kansas City area. Perkins, who grew up in Texas, met Belcher, who grew up in New York, through a cousin, Whitney Golden Charles, the wife of Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles. Perkins moved to Kansas City in 2010 to be with Belcher. Her relatives learned of her death from the news, police said. A woman who answered the phone at a relative’s home Monday declined to comment. Monday afternoon, the family issued a statement that spelled Perkins’ first name with a double s, though she spelled it with one on her Facebook page: “On behalf of the Perkins Family, we appreciate the outpouring of love and concern for our Kassandra ‘Kasi’ Perkins. Our hearts are truly broken for Kasi was a beloved daughter, granddaughter, sister, mother, cousin and friend.… “Please keep us in your hearts and prayers as well as the Belcher family for two lives were loss. Again we thank you for your support, our wish is for Kasi to be remembered for the love she shared with us all. Kasi will be truly missed!” Jamaal Charles also released a statement: “Our family has suffered a personal tragic loss.… As this is a very tough time for our family, I ask that we are respected as we grieve. Kassandra was not only family, but a friend and a loving mother. As my actual family and my Kansas City Chiefs family have been altered forever, we ask that you keep us and most importantly their child in prayer. Thank you all for your continued support.” Later Monday, Belcher’s somber relatives provided statements outside of Belcher’s boyhood home in New York. Yamiesse Lawrence, a cousin of Belcher’s, said the weekend’s events were an “inconceivable tragedy.” “As a family, no words can express the sorrow we feel over the loss of Jovan and Kasandra,” Lawrence read aloud. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/04...#storylink=cpy Last edited by ShowtimeSBMVP; 12-04-2012 at 01:20 AM..
Posts: 23,832

12-04-2012, 02:35 PM	#452
BIG_DADDY THE RED MENACE Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Texas Casino cash: $2558410	For all we know due to the selfish nature of her parents Zoe may be better off going down this path. This was very much a tragedy but there are tons of bad things that happen every day. I am not sure why some people feel the need to spend unlimited amounts of time mocking those that have already paid the price of their life for their own selfish ways. __________________ The diabolical genius of Marxism-Socialism is that it provides the emotional and intellectual road map for autocrats to persuade millions of people to support their own enslavement to government. ~Mark Levin April 15, 2019
Posts: 32,522

12-04-2012, 02:55 PM	#453
loochy Hey Loochy, I'm hooome! Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: PooPooKaKaPeePeeShire Casino cash: $-1719603	Hey guys, remember that time when Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide in front of Crennel and Pioli? Boy, that was quite a shocker. __________________ Hey Loochy, I'm hoooome!
Posts: 42,170

12-04-2012, 03:34 PM	#458
ShowtimeSBMVP Chiefs Join Date: Feb 2009 Casino cash: $1206009	This story appears in the Dec. 10, 2012, issue of Sports Illustrated. Buy the digital version of the magazine here. For a Thanksgiving video on the Chiefs' website, fourth-year linebacker Jovan Belcher smiled into the camera and shared what he was thankful for: "First and foremost, God, family and friends just keeping me focused." To friends in private, his recent messages were more complex and unrecognizable as having come from the same person. Reggie Paramoure, who played on defense with Belcher at the University of Maine, was texting with his former teammate last Friday night. "I see yall boys aint doing too well," Paramoure wrote, referring to the Chiefs' 1-10 start. "Wats goen on wit u besides ball." "Yea man," Belcher replied, "our 'o' can't even put 7 in the board for us, but everything good bro, baby momma crazy but I have a little girl almost 3 month man and she's a blessing, she makes me smile on the worst day." "Daughter!" Paramoure wrote, and then jokingly suggested that Belcher better have a gun ready to ward off future boyfriends. "Yea man," Belcher responded, "I got about 8 guns now, from hand Gunz to assault rifles for her little bf's." The previous week's game had been the first this season that Belcher, 25, did not start. "I'm good bro," he wrote, toward the end of the exchange, "just trying to stay on the field and get this new contract but this losing s**t ain't helping." On Saturday morning Belcher used one of his handguns to kill Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his daughter, before killing himself. "Just the night before, I was checking up on him," Paramoure says. "That's what's so surreal, that I was literally speaking to him the night before." Belcher was generally a quiet man, says Paramoure, but, "he was very emotional. I believe that's what made him so good [on the field]." In late October, when Belcher was in West Babylon for his high school's homecoming game, he avoided the sideline, lest he be asked to give a speech. "To get him loud," says Ollie Roy, 30, a longtime friend from the area, "you'd really have to piss him off." It could, however, be done. According to Steven Barker, a former defensive back at Maine, Belcher once had to get stitches in his thumb after he punched a glass panel during an argument with Jessica Higgins, his long-term college girlfriend. The team was forced to run as punishment. "They had their arguments and fights," Barker says, "but nothing crazy." It was, as far as anyone knows, an isolated incident. Most of the time, Belcher was the ideal student-athlete. Still, Cosgrove knew better than to presume that he could see everything inside his misfit toys. "Everyone has a dark side," he said on Saturday on Maine's campus. "I do know that for all Jovan's successes, he didn't have successful relationships with women." Kasandra Perkins, 22, was, technically, a girlfriend. But for all intents and purposes, she was a spouse. Belcher and Perkins referred to one another as husband and wife, and Belcher's mother called Perkins her daughter. Belcher brought Perkins and her relatives to a Fourth of July block party in West Babylon last year. On Matthews Avenue, the block where Belcher grew up, it was a big deal. West Babylon is 80 percent white, but a small geographic triangle that residents refer to as "the CMG" -- because it contains Commander, Matthews and Gordon avenues -- is overwhelmingly African-American, and extremely close knit. Bringing a significant other from out of town to the CMG really meant something. Roy saw Belcher at the July 4th party and again on the block this October. Belcher was friendly -- he knocked on Roy's door, as always -- but, to Roy's surprise, did not mention his daughter, Zoey, born on Sept. 11 in Kansas City. People who knew Belcher and Perkins in Kansas City had seen the cracks developing in their relationship. Brianne York, 21, befriended Perkins at Metropolitan Community College-Blue River in Independence, Mo., and noticed that football and a new child were straining Belcher's and Perkins's relationship. Perkins would mention, unhappily, that Belcher was often out late doing "team bonding stuff," she says. According to another of Perkins's friends, Devene Dunson-Rusher, team bonding sometimes meant drinking, and Perkins was uneasy with some of the Chiefs players with whom Belcher was carousing. Before Zoey was born, says Dunson-Rusher, Belcher wanted Perkins to get a job. After the birth, according to York, Belcher was upset when she didn't clean the house. According to Belcher's friends, Perkins wanted to upgrade their lifestyle and move to a different house. Perkins did move to another house, but not with Belcher. She left with Zoey and moved first into the home of Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, whose wife is Perkins' cousin, and then in with her family in North Texas. But the couple reconciled, and Perkins moved back in with Belcher last month. Belcher's mother had just moved to Kansas City from West Babylon to help care for Zoey and take some pressure off the couple. Briefly, by outward appearances anyway, the two were happy again. Belcher and Perkins, York says, enjoyed going to gun ranges together. Once, when York was at the couple's house, she noticed a handgun on the kitchen table. "I guess they forgot it was out," she says. Dunson-Rusher recalls once seeing a rifle leaning against a chair in the room she called Belcher's man cave. Again, underscoring how wide the gulf can be between one perception of a man and another, every one of the West Babylon friends of Belcher's who spoke with SI had no idea he was interested in guns. According to a law enforcement official close to the investigation -- and contrary to published reports -- Belcher spent Friday night "partying" with another woman at the Power and Light District, a bar area in downtown K.C. He returned home between 6:30 and 7 a.m., at which point he and Perkins argued. Then, with his own mother in the house, Belcher used a handgun to shoot the mother of his baby girl nine times. He then drove to the Chiefs' practice facility in a Bentley so new it had temporary plates. At the facility, Belcher jumped out of the car holding a different handgun and encountered general manager Scott Pioli, who was heading into the building. Belcher thanked Pioli for giving him a chance as an undrafted player. He then confessed that he had shot his girlfriend and insisted that he was not going to jail. He asked to have head coach Romeo Crennel sent out. Crennel emerged, and Belcher thanked him too. Crennel and Pioli pleaded with Belcher to put the gun down, but Belcher was beyond coach's orders. He turned around and walked about 20 feet. He took a knee -- as football players do at the end of games from the time they're in peewee -- and shot himself in the head. Inevitably, those who knew Belcher were left wondering what they could have done. Before she blocked her Twitter feed, Higgins, Belcher's girlfriend at Maine, wrote, "I just can't help but to think what if I didn't miss that phone call." Said Jets defensive end Mike DeVito, who hosted Belcher on his recruiting trip to Maine and played alongside him for three seasons, "I wish I had stayed in contact with him, because you'll always wonder, could you have helped?" Said Jarrod Gomes, who played safety in college beside Belcher, "We can't believe it. ... We're trying to figure out what was really going on in his life." If Belcher needed urgent help, none of the people who spoke with SI knew it. "I'd never seen any outbursts," said Willis Miles, Belcher's uncle. A video on the Kansas City Star website shows Belcher sprawled on the floor of a church, patiently tutoring an eight-year-old in reading. On Belcher's public Facebook page, he "liked" photography and Family Guy. As professional athletes go, he seemed so knowable. But "likes" can go only so far in revealing the true substance of a person and just what is going on in his mind. Now, all who knew Belcher -- from his mother, Cheryl Shepard, who was to return to New York with her orphaned granddaughter, to the player's friends in Kansas City, Maine and West Babylon -- are left to wonder who they really knew. Chris Almonte, a 23-year-old father of six and a friend of Belcher's from the CMG, was working in his yard when he got a phone call with the news on Saturday morning. It was so at odds with his conception of Belcher that all Almonte could think to do was to bury the phone in the hole he had been digging, as if that would make the news go away. Like Cosgrove, Belcher's high school coach, Albert Ritacco, has been around football players long enough to understand what he cannot understand. "I can't find anything negative to say from the four years I coached him," Ritacco says. "But trying to understand what goes on in a man's life outside of football is a little different. I don't know why things happen in life. Who knows?" Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...#ixzz2E7ahPJyJ
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12-04-2012, 04:09 PM	#460
WV Veteran Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: In the Holler Casino cash: $10004950	Nice article chiefsando's..thanks.
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12-04-2012, 04:20 PM	#462
CaliforniaChief #RIPAce Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: So Cal Casino cash: $10565899	Just more proof that Brady Quinn was right on the money. How much do we really know the people in our lives?
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