Fort Worth, Texas – No little boy should ever have to stare death in the eye. But there was 7-year-old Darius Williams, hands trembling, standing in front of a church packed by more than 2,000 mourners, saying goodbye to a corpse in an open casket.
You could hear hearts breaking all the way in the back row of Great Commission Baptist Church at the sight of this frightened child, and in that moment, it did not matter a bullet had snuffed the life from a famous NFL player. The fact a son must grow up without his father was reason enough to reach for a box of tissues in the aisle.
The leading cause of death among young African-American males between 18 and 25 years old is murder. Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was gunned down at age 24.
Won’t somebody stop the killing?
“As a culture and a country, we need to start respecting life,” Broncos safety John Lynch said Saturday, after traveling with the entire Denver team from Colorado, where Williams was shot and killed in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
While there were flowers gorgeously arranged in the No. 27 Williams wore for the Broncos and stories of “D-Will” that shook bellies with laughter, the most haunting images were of young black men who showed up to pay final respects during the weekend while wearing “Scarface” T-shirts or sweats stitched with big, block letters admonishing boyz from the ‘hood to stop snitchin’.
The tragedy of Williams will be in vain if a day or a week or a month after he is buried, the senseless killing resumes.
He lived and died with a foot in two worlds, always keeping it real, but ultimately fell victim to the same dangerous culture Williams worked so hard to escape as a teenager, when an undersized cornerback prayed for a chance to make a name for himself in football.
“We talk all the time about the dangers of an NFL athlete with feet in both worlds,” said Gene Upshaw, executive director of the players union. “But it’s hard. It’s difficult for a player to deny where he came from. It’s like telling an NFL player he can’t go home again.”
When rookie Jay Cutler was thrust into the job as starting quarterback after Thanksgiving for a team with fading playoff hopes, I sought out the athlete with the best swagger in the Denver locker room to ask advice for any young pro in a tough spot.
“Fear nothing,” Williams told me, his face glowing with the smile that made his cockiness endearing in a 5-foot-8 NFL player.
Williams died fearless. We are left to fear for the mothers, brothers and sisters of less famous victims who will leave behind loved ones awakened by a horrible phone call at 3 a.m.
We might never know the motivation for ambushing a white stretch Hummer limousine in which Williams and teammate Javon Walker were passengers.
But at the New Year’s Eve bash at the Shelter nightclub where the Broncos cornerback spent his final hours, there was so much wall-to-wall attitude, according to an eyewitness who asked not to be identified out of concern for his personal safety, that accidentally stepping on the toes of an agitated patron’s new Air Jordans might have been enough to incite a violent confrontation.
Why all the anger? Amateur sociologists like to point a right- eous finger at the violent images set to the beats of rap. But music rattling the windows of a car doesn’t kill. A gun in the glove box does. Blaming hip hop for murder would be as ludicrous as pinning the problem of babies born out of wedlock on “Little Red Corvette” by Prince.
While the homicide rate among young black males has significantly declined since the middle 1990s, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, a black man roughly the same age as Williams faces a risk eight times greater of being murdered than his white counterpart in America.
In an interview with The Post a month before he died, Williams admitted as a teenager he hung around gang members, with drugs and violence that was “right there, in your face.”
A move to the NFL gave Williams fame and fortune, but no sanctuary from the dangerous idea that packing a gun is the great equalizer in any dispute.
“We must address this kind of behavior, this kind of danger with our athletes in the NFL,” Broncos owner Pat Bowlen said. “We’re going to as a league approach this in a far different way, and not put our players in jeopardy.”
Shortly after noon, as a choir belted out beautiful gospel, proclaiming to the Lord, “You are good all the time; all the time You are good,” pastor Douglas E. Brown stepped to the pulpit.
Outside the church, traffic on a busy street slowed to a crawl, as motorists gawked at a lone cowboy riding a horse back and forth on the sidewalk, in a solemn tribute to a fallen NFL player.
The sad cowboy’s name was Reggie Bracey, whose own son competed in football alongside Williams at O.D. Wyatt High School not so many years ago.
A Broncos flag carried by Bracey waved in the chilly winter breeze. “This is my way,” he confided, “of saying, ‘I’m sorry.”‘
As the funeral began, attendants lowered the lid on Williams’ copper casket without a thud, leaving a little boy without the sound of his father’s voice forever.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
