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“I was just shocked,” Barnett said.
He shouldn’t have been.
Sadly, Walker has been down this road before. In fact, some of the circumstances surrounding Monday’s incident, in which the 29-year-old receiver was robbed of jewelry and cash after a night of partying, are eerily similar to the New Year’s Day 2007 shooting death of his Denver Broncos teammate, Darrent Williams. Williams died in Walker’s arms after the limo they were riding in was sprayed with bullets in a drive-by shooting.
Walker, who recently signed a six-year, $55 million contract with the Oakland Raiders, suffered a fractured eye socket Monday but is expected to be released from the hospital soon.
“That’s a guy who’s very good at heart,” Barnett said. “He was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s happened a couple of times to him. He, once again, was just trying to go out and have a good time. Sometimes when you’re out at those hours, things like that happen. But it’s not his fault. ... It’s the messed-up world we live in that people would do that to another individual.”
It has happened to Walker enough that you have to worry about his judgment.
When Walker was drafted by the Packers in 2002, he was an amiable, accommodating guy. Even during the lengthy contract dispute that led to his trade to Denver in 2006, Walker showed little, if any, bitterness.
Unfortunately, poor decisions have turned Walker into another on a growing list of athletes who make mistakes but don’t learn from them.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Walker had been spraying champagne into the crowd at a nightclub at the Hard Rock hotel-casino before leaving at 6:30 a.m. Police found him an hour later.
The paper also said it was the second night in a row Walker purchased bottles of Dom Perignon and sprayed a crowd at a club. He did the same thing at the Wynn
hotel-casino early Sunday, spending $15,000 for 15 bottles.
Of course, there is no great crime in spraying champagne — unless someone takes offense to it or takes note of the ostentatious display of wealth and targets you.
Walker once said the melee that resulted in Williams’ death on Jan. 1, 2007, started because Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall and his cousin were spraying champagne at a Denver nightclub and that it agitated gang members in attendance. Although that was only 18 months ago, Walker somehow forgot the lesson, which had the Packers trying to put the situation into perspective Tuesday.
“I think it’s a wake-up call for everybody,” said Greg Jennings, who was drafted to replace Walker. “Just because you’re an NFL athlete, it doesn’t exempt you from any off-the-field issues that may occur to the normal citizen. It puts the spotlight on you even more so. That’s why you have to be careful who you associate yourself with.”
When things like this happen, we always hear athletes say it’s a wake-up call. As Walker showed, that call too often is ignored.
