No Motive Known In Shooting Of NFL Player

Darrent Williams Hoped To Save Kids From Violence; Instead, He Was Gunned Down Himself

(CBS/AP)  Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams wanted to save kids from violence.

Williams' mother, Rosalind, doesn't want her son's dreams to die after he was shot and killed early Monday. The player's white stretch Hummer was hit with a barrage of bullets after a nightclub dispute following a New Year's Eve party.

"I want every kid to know to live their life to the fullest," she said. "Don't let anyone say you can't do anything. Look what Dee achieved in 24 years."

Williams sustained a single gunshot wound to the neck, according to Robert Whitmore, chief medical examiner in the county coroner's office.

Police had no motive and no indication the 24-year-old player was targeted in the drive-by shooting, which occurred hours after Denver was eliminated from the playoffs with a loss to San Francisco.

It wasn't enough to get his team into the playoffs, but Williams' New Year's Eve was a good day, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan. He had three tackles and returned two punts for 50 yards against the San Francisco 49ers. But just hours later, he was dead.

Williams was in his second season with the NFL, and by most accounts he was well liked, a hard worker, with an infectious smile.

"He was one of the most positive young men I've ever been around," Williams' agent Jeff Griffin said. "He lit up the room with his smile."

A native of Ft. Worth Texas, Williams was a star player in high school. He had his run-ins with the law but nothing serious, and his high school coaches say if nothing else , the NFL had straightened him out.

"He wasn't a perfect kid, he wasn't a perfect citizen, but none of us are," said coach Mike Underwood.

Another former high school football coach, Anthony Criss, said Williams had gone from hanging with the wrong crowd to trying to keep kids away gangs and violence.

"When he was younger, he always gravitated to the wrong crowd," said Criss, who coached Williams for three seasons at O.D. Wyatt High in Fort Worth. "I remember he went to church and the minister was talking to him about needing to pray and stop hanging around with the wrong people, and he started straightening up and doing the right thing."

Williams, who has two young children in the Fort Worth area, said last month that he wanted to return to his hometown in the offseason to talk to kids about staying out of street gangs. He also had recently spoken to Criss about establishing a free football camp for young players in Fort Worth.

"He had great compassion," Criss said. "He always wanted to try to make sure people did the right thing. He wanted to be a good parent, a good father, a good example for his kids. He will be missed."

Coach Mike Shanahan said the killing left him "speechless with sadness."

While some players went straight to the hospital where Williams' body was taken, others gathered at team headquarters, including receiver Javon Walker, who reportedly was in the limo when Williams was shot. Walker appeared to have a large blood stain smeared across his white shirt when he arrived. Walker did not speak with reporters.

A little after 2 a.m., Williams' limousine was fired on from a vehicle that pulled up along its side, hitting three people, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.

A man and a woman, Brandon Flowers and Nicole Reindl, were wounded. Williams' mother identified Flowers as a high school friend who was visiting Williams.

Reindl has a bullet in her head, and doctors were deciding whether to operate, reports the Rocky Mountain News. She is a University of Colorado student who had gotten into the limo a few minutes before the shooting to catch a ride to her car about six blocks away. However, the Denver Post reports Reindl's injuries are not life-threatening.

Jackson said there was a dispute at a nightclub several blocks from the shooting where Williams and his group had attended a party. He said the argument didn't specifically involve Williams, according to witnesses, and the confrontation only involved taunts and didn't get physical. He also said no shots were fired from inside the limo.

Police were searching for a white Suburban or Tahoe with dark-tinted windows.

The club identified by police advertised a New Year's Eve event celebrating the birthday of Denver Nuggets basketball player Kenyon Martin. The Nuggets canceled practice Monday.

Martin told The Denver Post that he and several Nuggets left the nightclub before midnight, before any problems arose. "I was there. He was there. I left. I saw him. That was about the extent of it," Martin told the newspaper.

The club was closed Monday night, a torn New Year's hat lying outside on the sidewalk.

Hours after the shooting, the limo sat in a snowbank beside Speer Boulevard, a main street through downtown. Police and technicians worked amid snow and ice from recent storms, using small yellow plastic markers to indicate possible evidence.

"His heart was so big, he was always giving to those who didn't have," said Rosalind Williams, who flew to Denver from Fort Worth. "It didn't even have to be for an agency or a charity. If he knew you didn't have, he'd hand it out of his pocket."

Williams was a second-round draft choice in 2005 out of Oklahoma State and teamed with Champ Bailey to give Denver one of the NFL's elite cornerback tandems.

"He was the greatest players I have coached in my 20 years," Oklahoma State secondary and special teams coach Joe DeForest said. "He wanted to prove to the world that he could play. ... He wanted to prove himself, and that's the way he approached every game. It was what made him a great player."

Williams' family was trying to arrange a funeral Saturday at the Great Commission Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

"All I can say is he did more in his 24 years ... maybe that's why he did so much because he knew his time on Earth was limited," Rosalind Williams said. "Guns are in the wrong hands. People have no respect for human life. Dee won't be back. The guy who pulled the trigger has to live with it."

[kailumego1]

Newton221, well put, and those whom are too arrogant to realize, lives are in more peril or jeopardy than they know, because we are merely parts of the whole, and what affects the individual parts eventually will affect the entire country. If ever a %u201Cpolitical platform%u201D should challenge both Democrats and Republicans, this is certainly the topic, urban decay breed repetitiousness of gratuitous violence. Newton221, unfortunately, there aren%u2019t too many articulate and intelligent folks whom are willing to acknowledge and give a dam, for as long as they %u201Cthink%u201D this type of degradation doesn%u2019t touch them, they unthinkingly remove themselves emotionally from its path of destruction.

[kailumego1]

But, what they don%u2019t realize this type of gratuitous violence has no boundaries, no color-line, or class stratification, it encompasses whomever and whatever is in its path, because this type of %u201Csocial apathy%u201D has only a collective consciousness of social annihilation and self-deprecation. Individuals like these have only one mission in life and that is enveloping all of us into their sanguination of wretchedness and self-loathing, the poverty, the single-parent absentee father that pops in and out, if nothing more than for procreation, the wandering drug/alcoholic parents sifting through the detritus searching for nickels and dimes to pay the overzealous %u201Cdrug lord%u201D, while he and his siblings scramble for food, he%u2019ll result to robbing and killing whomever, for money to pay the rent, keep the lights and gas for being turned off, and buy the latest %u201Cfad%u201D, in order to not appear %u201Cun-cool%u201D. Of which, for him/her there is no way out, he/she has no role model, parent, encouraging him/her to reach for the %u201Cimpossible%u201D, stay in school and get an education, for he/she can be a doctor, scientist, lawyer, publisher, etc. He/she don%u2019t live in a sacred community where academic success is [has been] hammered repetitiously, he/she lives in a neighborhood where intellectuals are thought of as insurgents, because he/she has been taught urban life is [has been] a mockery by the visceral.

[kailumego1]

So, go ahead intelligentsia cast your virtuous superiority and self-indignation onto the wretched, weak powerlessness, of those whom have trampled themselves into self-dilapidation. Show your immaculate wisdom [pusillanimousness] through the despoliation of those whom are weakening by internal/external madness, those whose lives are meaningless and seek only to violate all who mock with laughter. Show them your immaculate wisdom [pusillanimousness] through your repeated gestures of mockery, instead of enlightening them of a different path. Keep on slinging your putrid excrement of self-righteousness, while flaunting superiority, show them the real intelligentsia, the imperfect demagogue reviled by the Islamic Fundamentalist, Venezuelans, Africans, the Chinese, etc. Continue to be that example, of why, so many revile Americans, carry on and wave your virtuous finger with surreptitious laughter at the %u201Curban degradation%u201D, shout to the rafters, look at the indolent savagery, watch them disembowel in their sanguination. So, when those whom have disemboweled themselves in their sanguination become aware of the %u201Cmockery%u201D, they will single-file march unto your doorsteps with their collective consciousness of social annihilation and self-deprecation, and slaughter you with their detritus of wretchedness.

[newton221]

At some point all states for the good of the country are gonna have to make a statement against this kind of senseless killing. I only believe in capitol punishment in very rare and extreme cases. Such as Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway for example. The low life who committed this crime may not be a serial killer. However the complete disregard for human life that was displayed over NOTHING. I believe makes him a good candidate for the fast track to the death chamber. These senseless killings simply cannot be tolerated in our society. It could be me or you next!!!

[momofthreebo]

Wow...You guys are deranged. This man was killed for no reason and everyone acts like he deserved it. Tis the season for fricken ignorance!!!

[agnim]

My country tis of thee
Replete with mis-e-ry
Much death we bring!

[bluestardad]

Check and see who was riding with him was it someone's wife?

[valendug]

you don't need a motive to kill a thug, just a gun. everyone's glorifying him as a good guy and he's just another one of the thugz in the game of life.

[ladyephesus1]

Can you explain what you just said brazzale??
Im lost!!

[brazzale]

"All I can say is he did more in his 24 years ... maybe that's why he did so much because he knew his time on Earth was limited," Rosalind Williams said. "Guns are in the wrong hands. People have no respect for human life. Dee won't be back. The guy who pulled the trigger has to live with it."


The "gansta life"...nice and remember...."stop the snitchin" ....we dont want to catch this guy before he kills a few more people