Christ, Darrent Williams was killed??
 

Williams' death hard to comprehend

Source

(Jan. 2, 2007) -- The most chilling stat of the season comes not from the NFL, but from the Denver Police Department.

In Denver, Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams is the city's first homicide of the year.

It is hard to comprehend, even harder to discuss.

When a subdued Broncos owner Pat Bowlen addressed his team Tuesday morning at its training facility, he expressed that Williams' death was the single worst moment in the 23 years he has owned his organization.

Nothing could compare to a 24-year-old losing his life, in a senseless act of violence. What makes it more sickening is the man Williams had become.

Nobody was more liked, or respected, among the Broncos than Williams, who wore a smile as if he truly realized how much fun and what a privilege it was to make his living playing a game.

Williams was accountable to all those around him, whether it was helping the elderly woman next door shovel the snow off her driveway the day before he was shot, or answering every reporter's questions after Indianapolis' Reggie Wayne became one of the few to get the better of the Broncos cornerback.

Williams stood only 5-foot-8 but joked that it was a good thing, because if he had been 6-1, it would have been patently unfair.

Now what's most unfair is that Williams attended a New Year's Eve party in Denver at a nightclub called The Shelter. And as soon as Williams left The Shelter, he was murdered, dying in the lap of Broncos wide receiver Javon Walker.

The Broncos now are chartering a plane this weekend not for a Saturday playoff game in New England, which most everyone in the organization was expecting, but a funeral in Fort Worth, Texas. It is so unreal, it is surreal.

The player who had come to Denver in the same draft class as Maurice Clarett, who had gone the opposite direction of the wayward running back, always distinguished himself, according to all around him, as the most alive man in the room.

Now the life has been taken out of the man, and his team.

Just last year, after San Francisco played Denver, the 49ers lost offensive lineman Thomas Herrion. Now, after San Francisco played Denver again, the Broncos have lost Williams.

The new year has just begun and it's not too early to make a wish.

No more guns, no more death, no more sadness.