Sean Taylor - RIP UPDATED

For a person to be killed in their own house by an intruder in the middle of the night -- what a horrific way to die and what a senseless tragedy. The guy was twenty-four years old, had a young daughter and was in the prime of his life. Just awful.

I've rooted for the Skins all my life, but I've strongly tempered my fanboyness since getting into the business, even though I'm on the news side. This one hurts in a way I would have never expected. RIP.

 

Hell, he did yesterday...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/20/DI2007112000544.html

Not to mention the fact that it directly contradicts his own colleage, Mike Wise, who wrote earlier in the year that he had talked to better than 30 coaches and players, all of whom vouched for Taylor and his maturity - brought along by the birth of his daughter.

 

After having ESPN Radio on in the background for much of the day, I'm officially tired of everyone thinking they have to lecture us that the past two days brings football into focus, shows how little it means in the overall scheme of things.

Officially tired.

Football is no less and no more important today than it was Sunday. The unfortunate death of Sean Taylor should have nothing to do with how America looks upon its football.

What I want to see is the Patriots being down three points on Dec. 16 with two minutes left, and then Mike Tirico can go into the same diatribe about the unimportance of football in the big picture.

 

WTF is Wilbon talking about? I don't even know what "companies with their own public relations agenda" has to do with anything in this situation. Is he saying that Redskins teammates, coaches and team executives have zero credibility when talking about Taylor?

 

Pretty interesting take on the coverage ...

http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/071127_prince/

 

Jemele Hill opins that a story on Brett Favre in the same situation would not have included references to his problems with drug abuse.

1. Yes, I believe it would.

2. Brett Favre's laundry list does not equal this.

3. When a person's home is broken into for the second time in eight days, a good reporter looks for connections.

 

Yeah, it would be great to see more reporting coming out of Bristol and less dimestore philosophizing.

 

There have to be some excellent reporters from a number of top news outlets, including ESPN, on this case right now. We will learn more, much more.
The truth will probably suck, because it already does.

 

I agree with you. The ESPN columnist apparently believes that those questions are asked because of race.

 

While covering soccer, I told a photog the basic story, and he immediately said the girlfriend might have had a visitor. I read that he wasn't expected to be home, but I haven't read anything indicating that his girlfriend didn't expect him to be there. Obviously, she wouldn't have had anyone in the bedroom if she knew he might be coming in any minute.

Has anyone uncovered details of what Taylor did that day? Did he go out? Was he seen anywhere? Surely we'll wake up to read about what Taylor did in the hours prior to the shooting.

I still don't get why someone would come back to a place they've already visited. If they were in an empty house and didn't take anything, why would they try to take something when someone was there.

I'm just confused. Someone clear this up.

 

From my limited days on the police beat, I know the cops will work the case as follows.
1. The girlfriend.
2. Anyone else Taylor knew.
3. The random intruder angle.

Any could be true, those are just the probabilities.
Moddy, murder's murder. Whatever the facts, they're not likely to reflect badly on Taylor. He's a guy who did some really dumb shit. That puts him in a fairly large majority. There's a big step up from acting like an entitled jerk to doing something that could possibly justify or even explain somebody blowing you away. Taylor's background doesn't strike me as putting him in that league at all.