All-Pro Safety Sean Taylor Dies
NFL Safety, Washington Redskin, Succumbs to Gunshot Wound
Washington Redskins All-Pro safety Sean Taylor died early Tuesday as the result of a gunshot wound, leaving teammates reeling in the wake of his passing. The 24-year-old father of a one-year-old girl is the second National Football League standout to die by gunfire this year.
According to The Associated Press, Miami Police said Taylor was apparently shot by an intruder early Monday morning. He was struck in the upper part of one of his legs, and the bullet severely damaged the femoral artery, causing him to lose a great deal of blood, said a family spokesman.
"This is the worst imaginable tragedy," Redskins owner Daniel Snyder told The AP. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Sean's family."
Taylor died at Jackson Memorial Hospital where he’d been airlifted to in the wake of the shooting. Apparently he died without regaining consciousness.
"According to a preliminary investigation, it appears that the victim was shot inside the home by an intruder," Miami-Dade County police said in a statement. Police said the Taylor residence was broken into about a week earlier, and reported that Taylor awakened early Monday and went to confront the intruder armed with a machete. Investigators returned to Taylor’s home after his passing, but said they still don’t have a description of the murder suspect.
Until he became a father Taylor had a spotty record, getting into trouble both on and off the football field, and teammate Clinton Portis said he was a changed man after he became a father. “Ever since he had his child, it was like a new Sean, and everybody around here knew it. He was always smiling, always happy, always talking about his child."
Taylor had been repeatedly fined by the league for his over-the-top play earlier in his career, once fined $17,000 for spitting in the face of an opponent. He also got in trouble with the law after allegedly brandishing a handgun during a dispute over an all-terrain vehicle. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors stemming from the case.
During training camp last summer Taylor talked like a changed man.
"I just take this job very seriously," Taylor said in a group interview. "It's almost like, you play a kid's game for a king's ransom. And if you don't take it serious enough, eventually one day you're going to say, 'Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that.'
"So I just say, 'I'm healthy right now, I'm going into my fourth year, and why not do the best that I can?' And that's whatever it is, whether it's eating right or training myself right, whether it's studying harder, whatever I can do to better myself."
He was the fifth overall selection in the 2004 NFL draft after an outstanding season for the University of Miami Hurricanes. Taylor also played his high school ball in the city, starring as a running back and defensive back at Gulliver Prep. His father serves as the police chief in Florida City.
"Over the last two years, I got a chance to really see him grow as a man off the field," Snyder told the Washington Post. "Off the field, he became very, very important to me, our organization and Coach [Joe] Gibbs. This is a terrible tragedy, and we're going to miss him very, very much.”
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