According to charging documents obtained by the Kaimin, Naseem I. Gaskin, a sophomore transfer student on UM’s basketball team, was arrested Wednesday, Aug. 19, when police responded to a domestic abuse call at the ROAM Student Living apartments.

The police report stated “Jane Doe”, Gaskin’s girlfriend, claimed that she got into an argument with Gaskin and he kicked her off of the bed which caused bruises on her leg. She then returned to her feet and grabbed Gaskin’s phone, at which point he pinned her to the bed with his elbow. She couldn’t breathe.

Next, “Jane Doe” claimed that she tried to bite and pull Gaskin’s hair to stop him, to which he responded by grabbing her neck with one hand and continuing to strangle her.

The filed report state victim told the police she remembered thinking she did not want to die while Gaskin was strangling her. Gaskin then allegedly retrieved his phone and stopped strangling her. The girlfriend then left the apartment and called the police to report the assault.

Officers at the scene observed significant bruising to Doe’s neck consistent with finger marks, according to charging documents. The police documented the scratches on her neck, bruises on her left wrist and bruises under her bicep. Officers observed bruises on her leg, which she attributed to getting kicked off of Gaskin’s bed.

The officers also noted that victim’s voice was hoarse and she stated that her neck “really hurt” and that her throat was sore. Gaskin was then arrested for the assault on the victim.

In a statement to the Kaimin, UM athletics said Gaskin had been suspended from all athletics. Gaskin has also been placed on interim suspension from the University.

“The University and athletic department are aware of the incident involving student-athlete Naseem Gaskin,” the statement said. “We understand the seriousness of the allegations and absolutely do not condone such behavior.”

It had been a fairly typical day.

The two friends had spent the afternoon at a party in Connecticut, hanging out and having a good time.

“We had a good day,” said Berlin Brun, describing the day he spent last Saturday with Roobino Philemon, 30. “All we did was laugh and talk about the future and the plans that we had.”

On their way back to N.J., Philemon and Brun, both of West Orange, decided “at the last minute” to accept the invitation from a woman that Philemon had known for a few years and attend another party in Bridgewater.

But when they arrived at the party at a Bayberry Road address shortly after 11:30 p.m., they were greeted by two men who told them they were not welcome and were asked to leave, Brun said.

They never entered the home, Brun said, but the exchange outside was cordial enough, and the two men agreed to leave. There was no hostility, Brun added, which is why he still can’t understand why an encounter turned violent minutes later.

Brun said he and Philemon stayed out front in Philemon’s car for a few minutes and then drove to the side of the home on Foothill Road as they waited for three women who were also leaving the party. But as they were waiting, the homeowner, later identified as Linden native and former NFL Pro Bowler Muhammad Wilkerson, tapped on the window telling them again they had to leave, Brun said. (Wilkerson bought the home through a limited liability company in 2016, according to property records.)

Unbeknownst to Brun and Philemon, the police had already been called to the house twice that night for noise complaints by neighbors. Brun said he sensed the men outside were on edge.

“Y’all gotta go, y’all gotta go,” Brun recalls one of the men saying. “This is making my neighbors nervous.”

But as they began “to roll slowly down” the street adjacent to Wilkerson’s home in Philemon’s 2012 black Dodge Charger, Wilkerson’s brother, Hafeez Brown, 33, of Linden, allegedly fired multiple shots at the vehicle from behind, according to a criminal complaint. One of the bullets entered through the rear window, then the driver’s seat before piercing Philemon’s back, Brun said.

Brun said he jumped out of the car and dragged Philemon to the back of the car, called 911 and began driving to a hospital before flagging down an officer for help. Officers provided emergency medical care before an ambulance arrived and took Philemon to a nearby trauma center, where he was pronounced dead.

Brun said neither he or Philemon knew Wilkerson or Brown, and Brun said the two men did not know that the Bridgewater home was owned by Wilkerson, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing in Philemon’s death.

“They never disrespected us,” he said. “They never said anything negative to us. We did the exact same thing. The fact that they started shooting at us is where we are puzzled for why they even decided to do that.”

A week later, Brun said he still does not have answers.

“My question is ‘Why?’” Brun asked. “Because we were leaving. We didn’t have any type of disagreement or anything like that. My question is why, why did you choose to do something like this?”

“I need to know why,” he said. “He took my best friend. He took a father. He took a son. He took a family member and a loving friend.”

Police have released few details regarding the motive of the alleged homicide.

The killing has unnerved residents in a town where there was was only one homicide from 2014 to 2018, according to FBI crime data. A resident, who said she has lived on Bayberry Road for more than 50 years and asked not to be identified, said when she and her husband awoke to a police presence Sunday morning, they thought there had been a bad car crash on their typically quiet street.

Bridgewater police Captain John Mitzak told NJ Advance Media that police responded to Wilkerson’s home twice on the night of the shooting for noise complaints — around 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. (Bridgewater police have not released the noise complaint reports, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.)

A third call came at 11:53 p.m. from Brun, an urgent plea for help for his friend who had been shot. Brun said he tried to prop Philemon’s head as emergency responders cared for him, but sensed his best friend was dying.

“The fact that I am still alive and he is not, it bothers me,” Brun said.

After the shooting, a shelter in place was called for the area between 2:10 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. Sunday. A SWAT team responded to the Bayberry Road home, where five people cooperated without incident. Police later identified Brown as being one of the occupants in the home they responded to, authorities said.

Brown, who previously pleaded guilty to distribution of heroin in 2012, has been charged with first-degree murder and other firearm offenses. He was ordered by a Somerset County Superior Court judge Thursday to continue to be detained.

“The presumption of innocence is not just a legal formality. Mr. Brown, like any other citizen, is innocent until proven guilty, and looks forward to his day in court,” attorneys Joshua F. McMahon and Michael Noriega said in a statement.

Upon executing a search warrant at Wilkerson’s home, police allegedly recovered a “substantial” amount of marijuana and two firearms and ammunition.

George A. Bease, 32, of Bridgewater, was charged with second degree possession of a firearm while in the course of committing a controlled dangerous substance offense. According to the criminal complaint, police recovered packaging material and an amount of money “consistent with the intent to distribute” marijuana.

Bease is not charged in connection with Philemon’s death and was ordered released by a Superior Court judge Thursday.

Brown, Bease and Wilkerson each went to Linden High School where they played on the basketball team. Wilkerson went on to solidify himself as one of the best athletes to come out of New Jersey over the last decade.

The New York Jets selected him in the first round of the 2011 NFL Draft after he played at Temple University. Wilkerson went on to play seven years for the local team, making one Pro Bowl and two second-team All-Pro teams. He ended his NFL career with the Green Bay Packers.

“Mr. Wilkerson’s thoughts and prayers go out to all the individuals affected by this tragedy,” said a spokesman for Wilkerson.

Friends described Philemon as a loving father who had a contagious smile that he always flashed, whether it was at the Cresmont Country Club in West Orange, where he caddied for more than a decade, or at hangouts with friends.

He is survived by a young son and daughter.

Last year, Philemon received his degree in occupational therapy from Eastwick College and was working in the field in Staten Island. He had planned to go back to school to continue to earn additional degrees as an occupational therapist, Brun said.

A GoFundMe established in his honor doubled its goal of $10,000 to help pay for his funeral expenses and droves of family and friends have paid respects to Philemon on social media.

“Roobino Taron Philemon was and forever a stand up guy & father,” one friend wrote. “Full of life.”

Staff writer Katie Kausch contributed to this report.

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Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com.

Editor’s Note: This report contains graphic language detailing alleged sexual misconduct, including sexual assault and rape.

The Hustler is aware of at least eight allegations of sexual misconduct against Vanderbilt students and alumni, including football players. The Hustler has communicated with four of those who have come forward and will continue to report on this story as we are able. At this time, The Hustler is not reporting the names of accused individuals as we continue to investigate and attempt to contact involved parties. This story will be updated as more information becomes available to The Hustler.

Students and alumni came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault and rape, against multiple current and former Vanderbilt football players via Twitter on June 20.

The accused football players have either not responded to requests for comment from The Hustler or denied the allegations.

A spokesperson for Vanderbilt University’s athletic department emailed the following statement to The Hustler on June 20, in response to questions about four of the allegations: 

“We are deeply committed to ensuring the safety of each and every member of our Vanderbilt community. Acts of sexual assault and sexual misconduct in any context are totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Any reports of sexual misconduct are forwarded to the Title IX Office for follow-up.”

On June 21, Athletic Director Candice Storey Lee posted a nine tweet thread acknowledging the accusations and stating “these allegations are handled by [Vanderbilt’s] Title IX and student accountability offices.” Her Twitter statement was later republished on the Vanderbilt athletics’ website.

Lee also said in the statement, “As a former student-athlete myself and someone who has dedicated herself to this university, I have no greater duty than making sure that all of the young people who come through Vanderbilt stay as safe and healthy as possible, and are able to succeed.”

Student groups including Vanderbilt BSA, Vanderbilt CSA, Vanderbilt NAACP, the Alpha Gamma Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and the Eta Beta Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. have issued statements condemning sexual misconduct on Vanderbilt’s campus, supporting survivors and those who have been sharing their stories and calling for stronger allyship and accountability. 

On June 24, Interim Chancellor and Vice Provost Susan Wente and Athletic Director Lee also emailed a joint statement from the university addressing sexual misconduct and assault that read in part: “As women and mothers ourselves, our hearts go out to all whose lives have been forever altered by any such heinous acts. As leaders, we are committed to striving every day to provide the safest and healthiest environment possible for all of our students, and we are deeply sorry that this institution we have worked to lead has not been able to provide this for everyone.”

In response to the recent allegations, the university will be conducting a review of campus policies, processes and support systems to assess their effectiveness, per the statement. The review will then inform an action plan that will address process gaps and improve existing programs that are operated by Project Safe, the Title IX office, Vanderbilt athletics and other parts of the university to combat sexual misconduct, according to the university’s statement.

These accusations came seven years after four former Vanderbilt football players—Brandon Vandenburg, Cory Batey, Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie—were charged with five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. In addition, Vandenburg was charged with tampering with evidence and unlawful photography.

Vandenburg was eventually sentenced to 17 years in prison. Batey and Banks were each sentenced to 15 years in prison, and McKenzie was sentenced to 10 years of probation as part of a plea deal, according to a 2018 New York Post article.

Kaleigh Clemons-Green was one of the students who came forward on June 20, 2020 and was willing to speak to The Hustler about her experience. Clemons-Green, a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, graduated from Vanderbilt in May and was a member of the women’s basketball team. 

Clemons-Green said she decided to share her story because one of the other women that had posted allegations on Twitter was a mentor of hers at Vanderbilt.

“I didn’t want [my mentor] to feel like people don’t believe her,” Clemons-Green said. “Being another student-athlete as well, people think it can’t happen to us because we are student-athletes. They think that we have a voice with these things. It happens to even the ones people think are the strongest. I didn’t want her to feel alone and I wanted her to have some validation. This is not just an isolated incident.”

Clemons-Green said she first encountered her alleged assaulter prior to her arrival at Vanderbilt. She said she had met the former Vanderbilt football player through a mutual friend.

The alleged assault took place in 2018. Clemons-Green said she was spending time with the former football player in her dorm room, similar to previous encounters they’d had.

“Then it escalated,” Clemons-Green said. “He made a move, and I did not feel comfortable with it. I said no, but it progressed, and his aggressions started to get stronger. At that point, I told him seriously that he needed to stop.”

Once she threatened to start yelling, the former football player stopped, Clemons-Green said.

Clemons-Green said she reported the incident to Project Safe but not to the Title IX office.

“I wanted them to know the name in case it ever happened again to anyone else, but I did not want to report to the police. They just had his name in their database,” Clemons-Green said.

“It actually happened again with the [football player] to someone else,” Clemons-Green said. “[The victim] reported it, so that process was a little different just because he was a serial offender at this point. The second time it happened, they had to—by law—notify people that it happened a second time. So when it happened a second time, I was notified.”

Clemons-Green said she received the notice from Project Safe via email but does not know any information about the other alleged victim. 

The Hustler was not able to obtain a copy of the email from Clemons-Green or Project Safe, nor confirm that the athlete was reported to Project Safe.

“In accordance with best practices and to protect student privacy, Project Safe does not confirm that it is working or has worked with particular students, even when those students may have shared their experiences publicly,” Cara Tuttle Bell, Director at Project Safe, said in an email to The Hustler. 

“Survivor speak-outs of all forms can prompt a range of emotional responses, and we have been helping students process their experiences and feelings and offering guidance for how students can support their friends,” Tuttle Bell said. “Project Safe remains available 24 hours a day to support any member of the VU community who has been affected by sexual assault or other forms of intimate partner violence.”

“It seemed like there was a lack of accountability on the football side. He was getting in trouble on campus,” Clemons-Green said. “Because he was a football player, people were turning a blind eye to it.”

Other publications including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, 247 Sports and Bleacher Report have written about the recent allegations.

ATLANTA — The starting point guard for a Georgia university women’s basketball team is one of five people indicted on charges including murder in the July killing of a man who was found shot to death in the parking deck of an Atlanta apartment complex.

Kennesaw State University’s Kamiyah Street, 20, turned herself in Thursday, according to Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan.

The university’s athletic department said in a statement that once it found out about her arrest Thursday, Street was “suspended indefinitely” from all team and athletic activities.

Street remained in the Fulton County jail Monday without bond. Online court records did not list an attorney who could comment on her behalf. Her arraignment was set for Dec. 13.

“He was always towering over everybody, as a child through adulthood, but his character has always been the same,” said high school friend Coach Chuck. “He really was a gentle giant. He really was about fairness and goodness for everybody, even at the expense of his own hurt, he still stood for that. He said, ‘That’s what means something.'”

In the 1990s, Floyd became a known rapper under the name Big Floyd, alongside DJ Screw and the hip hop group Screwed Up Click.

He ran into trouble with the law in his 20s and 30s, including theft in 1998 and drug charges in 2002 and 2005. He was charged in 2007 with armed robbery in a home invasion in Houston and was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a plea deal, according to court documents.

Friends said after serving time, he became an anti-violence advocate and decided to get a fresh start by moving to Minnesota in 2014.

“He was changing his life. He went to Minnesota. He was driving trucks,” Stephen Jackson, NBA champion basketball player and longtime friend of Floyd, said in an Instagram post. “Floyd was my brother, man. We called each other ‘twin.'”

Floyd’s roommate in St. Louis Park, Alvin Manago, said he became a man of faith and mostly kept to himself.

“God-fearing, things like that,” said Manago. “He just would read his little scriptures every once in a while. He had them by his bed.”

 Floyd worked several jobs in the Twin Cities, most recently as a security guard at Conga Latin Bistro in Minneapolis.

“He’s that type of person that if you need help, you can count on him,” said his former boss Jovanni Thunstrom. “Very nice guy. My employees loved him. My customers loved him. He was very respectful and a hard worker.”

Floyd was also a father of five, according to speakers at his memorial service Thursday.

His son, Quincy Mason, spoke in Minneapolis earlier this week, saying, “We deserve justice. That’s all I have to say.”

In an interview with ABC News, Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter Gianna said she wants the world to know “that I miss him.”

“My heart is broke for my baby. It’s broke,” said Gianna’s mother Roxie Washington. “I mean that was his baby. He loved his little girl.”

Floyd found love while living in Minneapolis. He met girlfriend Courteney Ross about three years ago. She said it was “love at first sight” and described him as funny, talkative and kind.

“He believed everyone in this world should get a chance. There’s no throwaway people. There’s nobody that doesn’t deserve love. He always showed that,” Ross said through tears.

Floyd’s six siblings said he stood for peace and unity.

“He always saw the lighter, the brighter side of things, and he made you feel like you could just do anything, like you could rule the world even if you’re going through something. That’s just how he spoke to you,” said brother Terrence Floyd. “That’s how I could just sum it up. He was a motivator, peaceful motivator.”

They hope his legacy will be one of change.

Floyd died at the age of 46 while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers.

Former Breakers player Glen Rice Jr has been allowed to leave the country and return to the United States despite facing a serious violence charge.

The 29-year-old American was arrested last November and charged with assault with intent to injure after an incident at an Auckland bar.

Today, the nearly 2m-tall swingman was due to appear again in the Auckland District Court.

However, he was missing, with rumours circulating that Rice had left New Zealand some time ago.

Rice’s lawyer, Peter Tomlinson, confirmed the situation.

He asked Judge Emma Parsons to excuse his client’s attendance for today’s hearing.

So where was Rice? Texas, his lawyer said.

Tomlinson cited the global Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse for the basketballer’s absence and inability to return to New Zealand and face the charge.

The judge pardoned Rice’s absence from today’s hearing, but also noted the unusual situation of continuing his bail without forcing him to comply with its conditions.

Rice, who has played for the Washington Wizards and was a second-round pick in the 2013 NBA draft, had joined the Breakers just 10 days prior to the alleged assault as an injury replacement.

Just a couple of weeks after his arrest, however, Rice was in trouble again after allegedly breaching his bail conditions. It lead to the Breakers tearing up his contract.

During Rice’s first court appearance, Breakers owner Matt Walsh was sitting alongside him and told media afterwards that the club would let the matter “play out” through the justice system.

The case will be back in court again in August, when a date for a judge-alone trial is to be set. Judge Parsons has already excused Rice’s attendance for that hearing.

Rice, who is the son of former NBA star and champion Glen Rice, has earlier pleaded not guilty to the charge.

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HOUSTON — Years before a bystander’s video of George Floyd’s last moments turned his name into a global cry for justice, Floyd trained a camera on himself.

“I just want to speak to you all real quick,” Floyd says in one video, addressing the young men in his neighborhood who looked up to him. His 6-foot-7 frame crowds the picture.

“I’ve got my shortcomings and my flaws and I ain’t better than nobody else,” he says. “But, man, the shootings that’s going on, I don’t care what ‘hood you’re from, where you’re at, man. I love you and God loves you. Put them guns down.”

At the time, Floyd was respected as a man who spoke from hard, but hardly extraordinary, experience. He had nothing remotely like the stature he has gained in death, embraced as a universal symbol of the need to overhaul policing and held up as a heroic everyman.

But the reality of his 46 years on Earth, including sharp edges and setbacks Floyd himself acknowledged, was both much fuller and more complicated.

Once a star athlete with dreams of turning pro and enough talent to win a partial scholarship, Floyd returned home only to bounce between jobs before serving nearly five years in prison. Intensely proud of his roots in Houston’s Third Ward and admired as a mentor in a public housing project beset by poverty, he decided the only way forward was to leave it behind.

“He had made some mistakes that cost him some years of his life,” said Ronnie Lillard, a friend and rapper who performs under the name Reconcile. “And when he got out of that, I think the Lord greatly impacted his heart.”

___

Floyd was born in North Carolina. But his mother, a single parent, moved the family to Houston when he was 2, so she could search for work. They settled in the Cuney Homes, a low-slung warren of more than 500 apartments south of downtown nicknamed “The Bricks.”

The neighborhood, for decades a cornerstone of Houston’s black community, has gentrified in recent years. Texas Southern University, a historically black campus directly across the street from the projects, has long held itself out as a launchpad for those willing to strive. But many residents struggle, with incomes about half the city average and unemployment nearly four times higher, even before the recent economic collapse.

Yeura Hall, who grew up next door to Floyd, said even in the Third Ward other kids looked down on those who lived in public housing. To deflect the teasing, he, Floyd and other boys made up a song about themselves: “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Cuney Homes kid. They got so many rats and roaches I can play with.”

Larcenia Floyd invested her hopes in her son, who as a second-grader wrote that he dreamed of being a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

“She thought that he would be the one that would bring them out of poverty and struggle,” said Travis Cains, a longtime friend.

Floyd was a star tight end for the football team at Jack Yates High School, playing for the losing side in the 1992 state championship game at Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin.

He was an atypical football player. “We used to call him ‘Big Friendly,'” said Cervaanz Williams, a former teammate.

“If you said something to him, his head would drop,” said Maurice McGowan, his football coach. “He just wasn’t going to ball up and act like he wanted to fight you.”

On the basketball court, Floyd’s height and strength won attention from George Walker, a former assistant coach at the University of Houston hired for the head job at what is now South Florida State College. The school was a 17-hour drive away, in a small town, but high school administrators and Floyd’s mother urged him to go, Walker said.

“They wanted George to really get out of the neighborhood, to do something, be something,” Walker said.

In Avon Park, Florida, Floyd and a few other players from Houston stood out for their size, accents and city cool. They lived in the Jacaranda Hotel, a historic lodge used as a dormitory, and were known as the “Jac Boys.”

“He was always telling me about the Third Ward of Houston, how rough it was, but how much he loved it,” said Robert Caldwell, a friend and fellow student who frequently traveled with the basketball team. “He said people know how to grind, as hard as it is, people know how to love.”

After two years in Avon Park, Floyd spent a year at Texas A&M University in Kingsville before returning to Houston and his mother’s apartment to find jobs in construction and security.

Larcenia Floyd, known throughout the neighborhood as Ms. Cissy, welcomed her son’s friends from childhood, offering their apartment as refuge when their lives grew stressful. When a neighbor went to prison on drug charges, Ms. Cissy took in the woman’s pre-teen son, Cal Wayne, deputizing George to play older brother for the next 2½ years.

“We would steal his jerseys and put his jerseys on and run around the house, go outside, jerseys all the way down to our ankles because he was so big and we were little,” said Wayne, now a well-known rapper who credits Floyd with encouraging him to pursue music.

George Floyd, he said, “was like a superhero.”

___

Floyd, too, dabbled in music, occasionally invited to rap with Robert Earl Davis Jr. — better known as DJ Screw, whose mixtapes have since been recognized as influential in charting Houston’s place as a hotbed of hip-hop.

But then, the man known throughout Cuney as “Big Floyd,” started finding trouble.

Between 1997 and 2005, Floyd was arrested several times on drug and theft charges, spending months in jail. Around that time, Wayne’s mother, Sheila Masters, recalled running into Floyd in the street and learning he was homeless.

“He’s so tall he’d pat me on my head … and say, ‘Mama you know it’s going to be all right,'” Masters said.

In August 2007, Floyd was arrested and charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Investigators said he and five other men barged into a woman’s apartment, and Floyd pushed a pistol into her abdomen before searching for items to steal. Floyd pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to five years in prison. By the time he was paroled, in January 2013, he was nearing 40.

“He came home with his head on right,” said friend Travis Cains.

At a Christian rap concert in the Third Ward, Floyd met Lillard and pastor Patrick “PT” Ngwolo, whose ministry was looking for ways to reach residents in Cuney Homes. Floyd, who seemed to know everyone in the project, volunteered to be their guide.

Soon Floyd was setting up a washtub on the Cuney basketball courts for baptisms by Ngwolo’s newly formed Resurrection Houston congregation. He joined three-on-three basketball tournaments and barbecues, organized by the ministry. He knocked on doors with Ngwolo, introducing residents as candidates for grocery deliveries or Bible study.

Another pastor, Christopher Johnson, recalled Floyd stopping by his office while Johnson’s mother was visiting. Decades had passed since Johnson’s mother had been a teacher at Floyd’s high school. It didn’t matter. He wrapped her in a bear hug.

“I don’t think he ever thought of himself as being big,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of big dudes here, but he was a gentleman and a diplomat and I’m not putting any sauce on it.”

On the streets of Cuney, Floyd was increasingly embraced as an O.G. — literally “original gangster,” but bestowed as a title of respect for a mentor who’d learned from life experience.

In Tiffany Cofield’s classroom at a neighborhood charter school, some of her male students — many of whom had already had brushes with the law — told her to talk to “Big Floyd” if she wanted to understand.

Floyd would listen patiently as she voiced her frustrations with students’ bad behavior, she said. And he would try to explain the life of a young man in the projects.

After school, Floyd often met up with her students outside a corner store.

“How’s school going?” he’d ask. “Are you being respectful? How’s your mom? How’s your grandma?”

___

In 2014, Floyd began exploring the possibility of leaving the neighborhood.

As the father of five children from several relationships, he had bills to pay. And despite his stature in Cuney, everyday life could be trying. More than once, Floyd ended up in handcuffs when police came through the projects and detained a large number of men, Cofield said.

“He would show by example: ‘Yes, officer. No, officer.’ Very respectful. Very calm tone,” she said.

A friend of Floyd’s had already moved to the Twin Cities as part of a church discipleship program that offered men a route to self-sufficiency by changing their environment and helping them find jobs.

“He was looking to start over fresh, a new beginning,” said Christopher Harris, who preceded Floyd to Minneapolis. Friends provided Floyd with money and clothing to ease the transition.

In Minneapolis, Floyd found a job as a security guard at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center — the city’s largest homeless shelter.

“He would regularly walk a couple of female co-workers out … at night and make sure they got to their cars safely and securely,” said Brian Molohon, director of development for the Army’s Minnesota office. “Just a big strong guy, but with a very tender side.”

Floyd left after a little over a year, training to drive trucks while working as a bouncer at a club called Conga Latin Bistro.

“He would dance badly to make people laugh,” said the owner, Jovanni Thunstrom. “I tried to teach him how to dance because he loved Latin music, but I couldn’t because he was too tall for me.”

Floyd kept his connection to Houston, regularly returning to Cuney.

When Houston hosted the Super Bowl in 2017, Floyd was back in town, hosting a party at the church with music and free AIDS testing. He came back again for his mother’s funeral the next year. And when Cains spoke with him last, a few weeks ago, Floyd was planning another trip for this summer.

By then, Floyd was out of work. Early this spring, Thunstrom cut Floyd’s job when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the club to close.

On the evening of Memorial Day, Floyd was with two others when convenience store employees accused him of paying for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill, then called the police. Less than an hour later, Floyd breathed his last.

Those who knew him search for meaning in his death.

“I’ve come to the belief that he was chosen,” said Cofield, the teacher. “Only this could have happened to him because of who he was and the amount of love that he had for people, people had for him.”

It’s a small comfort, she admits. But, then, in Big Floyd’s neighborhood, people have long made do with less.

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For Ahmaud Arbery’s family, it was painful enough that the former high school linebacker had been killed while seemingly doing nothing more than taking a jog on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.

But as week after week passed following the late February shooting and no arrests were made, the Arberys began to lose faith in the people running their hometown of Brunswick, Georgia.

Then something unusual happened: A movement started. And the primary people behind it were members of Arbery’s football family.

Clearly, Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, had the most influence in helping move the case to the point that three men face charges after months of delays. She kept memories of her son alive with daily interviews on national cable television and other media, and refused to be shut out of the official investigation.

But the public awareness campaign that brought so much attention to Arbery’s death also grew out of his strong relationships in the world of football. Former teammates and coaches started the movement, called I Run With Maud, and high school classmates who now play in the NFL quietly reached out to power brokers to help get a full investigation of his death.

At the heart of I Run With Maud are two of Arbery’s former Brunswick High School teammates and one of his former coaches, along with two others. They organized a 2.23-mile run on Arbery’s birthday in May (Feb. 23 was the day of his death) and created the #IRunWithMaud hashtag and a Facebook page that now has 90,000 followers.

Their efforts grew out of the pain and frustration knowing that the 25-year-old Arbery was cornered by three white men and shot as he ran in their neighborhood, and what organizers perceived as a lack of transparency in the investigation in the first two months after the shooting.

Others in the football world joined the Arbery cause, including the Players Coalition, a group of current and former NFL players who advocate for social justice and ending racial inequality in America. Nearly 100 pro athletes signed a letter from the coalition calling for a federal investigation into the shooting.

The Arbery case drew support from NFL players who are normally reluctant to involve themselves in social movements. The biggest name who fits this profile is six-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady, now of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who signed the coalition’s letter.

“Tom understands our problems and what’s going on in the black community,” Takeo Spikes, a Players Coalition leader who lives in Georgia, told The Undefeated.

“If the NFL is 70% black, you’re not winning six championships without knowing what’s going on in the black community.”

Spikes said the Arbery case is a horrifying example of the problems the coalition was created to address.

“This falls right up our wheelhouse as the Players Coalition,” he said. “It’s mind-boggling to me that this young man was going out for a jog, no different than what I do all the time and millions of people do. And some vigilantes saw his black skin and decided to follow him and wanted justification for his existence in their area. They hunted him down like an animal and shot him.”

Ahmaud Marquez Arbery was born May 8, 1994, in one of the most passionate football regions in America. From an early age, he dreamed of playing in the NFL. But first, he wanted to play at the University of Miami, the alma mater of his favorite player, Sean Taylor.

Arbery was the youngest of three kids. His sister, Jasmine, was a year older and brother, Marcus Jr., was two years older. Their mom, Cooper-Jones, 47, is an insurance claims adjuster, and their dad, Marcus Arbery Sr., 57, drives a truck and operates his own businesses.

Affectionately known as Maud or Quez, he had a smile that could light up a classroom or a locker room. He started playing flag football at age 6. He also honed his football skills in a game known locally as “hot ball,” in which each player competes against everyone else. It’s a rough game and Arbery never shied away from hitting or being hit, gaining him mad respect, one friend recalled.

“Ahmaud was the type to be outside with no shoes on his feet,” said Akeem Baker, his best friend and fellow hot ball player.

Growing up, Arbery hung around his older brother as much as he could. By the time he was in middle school, Marcus Jr. was already a big man in town on the football field. Marcus Jr. played running back and patterned his game after the NFL’s Reggie Bush, who was known for his ability to make defenders miss in open space.

“He would ask me like, ‘Bro, how did you see that hole?’ Or, ‘How would you go about making this tackle?’ ” Marcus Jr. recalled in his first media interview since his brother’s death. “He would just ask me things like that, because he really looked up to me like I was a legend. But little did he know, I was just playing the game, that’s all we did.”

Arbery dreamed of making it big in football to help one special person, Marcus Jr. recalled. “My brother said, ‘Man, one of us going to have to go to the NFL. One of us going to make mama rich.’ He really believed that.”

Arbery’s favorite football player, Taylor, was drafted fifth overall by the Washington Redskins when Arbery was 10.

“He was like my brother’s hero, man. It was a big reason why we both wanted to wear No. 21,” Marcus Jr. said. “We looked up to Sean Taylor, just the way he played the game. … Sean Taylor wore a visor on his face mask, [Ahmaud] tried to do that. He wore Nike cleats like Sean Taylor. When Sean Taylor grew his hair out for football, he wanted to grow his hair out. He just wanted to emulate everything Sean Taylor did.”

As a high school freshman in 2008, Arbery was barely 5-feet-6 and weighed around 140 pounds. But “right after his freshman year, Ahmaud grew 6 inches,” said Victor Floyd, Brunswick’s head football coach at the time. “He went from 5-foot-6 to around 6 feet. That changed the whole dynamic.”

Even after that growth spurt, “He was a smaller, skinnier guy,” said Jason Vaughn, an assistant coach on the team. “He was behind some future NFL players in the defensive backfield. We were literally DBU,” said Vaughn, referring to Darius Slay, now a cornerback with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Justin Coleman and Tracy Walker, defensive backs with the Detroit Lions.

Although Arbery was fast and strong, “he wasn’t always the most elite athlete, but he was the most improved player,” said his teammate and cousin Demetrius Frazier.

Arbery’s turn to start for the Pirates came in his senior year, the 2011-12 season. “He was a good fit at outside linebacker because he was quick,” Vaughn said. “We had teams trying to run that wing-T and he would key in on that motion guy and that motion guy would be a nonfactor. He would completely take care of that dude.”

Frazier recalled one play from a midweek practice in 2011.

“We were doing goal-line drills and it got competitive. If the defense didn’t get that stop, they’d have to run,” said Frazier, who played offense. “I remember we had a running back named Jarvis Small, and he was built like a bowling ball. Jarvis came through the hole and Ahmaud lit him up.”

Several people said in interviews that Floyd was upset with Arbery for hitting a teammate with such force. “If we need that goal-line stop, Ahmaud was there,” Frazier said, laughing.

Arbery played well in his senior year, finishing with 77 tackles. But Coleman and Slay had gone on to college and the team lost six of its 10 games, its first losing season in Floyd’s seven years there. Arbery received an invitation to play in a Georgia-Florida all-star game for under-the-radar players. But he was a 160-pound linebacker and no college offered him a ride.

“At that point, we had to regroup and look at our resources and we decided just to go to a technical college and take up a trade,” said his mother.

Cooper-Jones said her son attended South Georgia Technical College in Americus, Georgia, for a year and a half before returning home. He worked various jobs around town, including one at McDonald’s and another at his father’s car wash.

When Arbery had free time, he liked to hang around family and was a regular babysitter for his brother’s two children, ages 2 and 1. Besides loving football, he was a big NBA fan. “Ahmaud,” Cooper-Jones said, “was a LeBron James fanatic. If you wanted to know any statistic about LeBron, Ahmaud was your go-to guy. When I say he studied LeBron, he studied LeBron.”

He also studied his running routine. He’d put his heel down before toe and often hit the road two or three times a day. He’d start at the family’s home on Boykin Ridge Drive and where he would end up would be anyone’s guess. “He ran everywhere, man,” his brother remembered. “I-95, the interstate. The Sidney Lanier Bridge. He would be behind the Dairy Queen. Numerous times I would be coming home from work and I would see him way back there behind the Winn-Dixie, running. I’d stop and say, ‘Bro, you need a ride home?’ He’d keep running. He’d ignore me. He was working out.”

“I think that Ahmaud did that for some type of therapy,” his mom said. “When he’s running, he’s alone. If he’s stressed about anything, running is how he relieved his mind.”

On Feb. 23, Arbery, dressed in brown khaki shorts, a white T-shirt and gray running shoes, headed out of the door of his home and wound up crossing U.S. Route 17, a four-lane highway, about two miles away.

He darted through the community until he got to Satilla Drive, where he entered a house under construction two doors down from the home of Gregory and Travis McMichael. Theories abound about what Arbery was doing in the house. The homeowner speculated he was getting a drink of water. His family has suggested he was looking at the wiring, as he’d talked about following in the path of his uncles and becoming an electrician. “He was looking at electric boxes, trying to look at electric work and stuff like that, because he wanted to be an electrician,” his dad said.

The McMichael men had become fixated on strangers in the neighborhood. Only a few black families live in Satilla Shores. The McMichaels suspected Arbery might have been behind a string of burglaries in the neighborhood, records show.

Arbery left the unfinished house after about three minutes and continued his run. Gregory McMichael, 64, a former cop and prosecutor’s investigator, later told authorities that Arbery seemed to be “hauling a–,” and not just jogging. He got a .357 Magnum and his son, Travis, 34, grabbed a shotgun. They got into their pickup and gave pursuit.

Another resident of Satilla Shores, William Bryan, joined the chase in his pickup truck. Arbery was running from three men in two pickups and no matter where he went, he seemed trapped, say prosecutors from Cobb County who are now handling the case. At one point, Bryan brushed Arbery with his truck. Arbery jumped into a ditch to avoid Bryan’s vehicle at other times, they say.

Eventually, Arbery ran out of room. Bryan was behind him and the McMichaels were in front of him. Finally, Arbery tried to run around the right side of the McMichaels’ truck, according to video of the incident. He was met by Travis McMichael pointing the shotgun at him, prosecutor Jesse Evans said in a court hearing.

So Arbery engaged Travis McMichael in a fight in an attempt to save his own life, Evans said. Travis McMichael then shot Arbery three times. Gregory McMichael watched while holding the .357 Magnum and talking to 911. According to investigators, as Arbery lay bleeding to death, Travis McMichael called him a “f—ing n—–.”

“Ahmaud Arbery was chased, hunted down and ultimately executed at the hands of these men,” Evans said. “He was on a run on a public road in a subdivision. He was defenseless and unarmed.”

Floyd, Arbery’s former head coach, now lives and works in South Carolina, and that’s where he was when he found out Arbery was dead. “When I first heard what happened, I said something about that isn’t right because Ahmaud wouldn’t want anyone shooting him,” said Floyd. “Kids change but I didn’t see him doing anything detrimental enough for anyone to shoot him.”

“I just remember getting a text from my mom that my brother was killed and just saying to myself, ‘This can’t be true. Is this a dream? They got the wrong person,’ ” Marcus Jr. said. “And it just didn’t seem real. Still, to this day, I’m just waiting to see my brother walk up to me and give me a hug.”

From the beginning, the case has been awkward for authorities in southeast Georgia. The reason: Gregory McMichael’s connections to law enforcement.

The Glynn County district attorney recused herself because Gregory McMichael used to work in her office. George Barnhill, the prosecutor in the next jurisdiction over, Ware County, also recused himself several weeks after he learned that his son and Gregory McMichael had worked together in the Brunswick district attorney’s office. But before he stepped aside, Barnhill wrote a letter to the Glynn County police saying there were no grounds to arrest the McMichaels or Bryan. Barnhill wrote they had a legal right to pursue Arbery and make a citizen’s arrest because they thought he was “a burglary suspect” in “their neighborhood.”

“It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived,” Barnhill wrote. “Under Georgia law this is perfectly legal.”

The McMichaels were only arrested after a third prosecutor was assigned to the case and the video emerged in early May, more than 10 weeks after the shooting. Eventually, the case was reassigned to prosecutors hundreds of miles away in Cobb County in northern Georgia.

A month after the killing, The Brunswick News obtained the police report of the shooting. The report only included Gregory McMichael’s version of events: that Travis McMichael shot Arbery in self-defense. Arbery’s supporters were especially angry that the newspaper mentioned an old legal case in which Arbery had been cited for carrying a weapon at a high school basketball game when he was 19.

“That article was absolutely so disrespectful,” said Vaughn. “To be honest with you, it sparked anger in me.”

The day after The Brunswick News article, Vaughn’s brother, John Richards, a lawyer and pastor in Little Rock, Arkansas, moderated a Facebook livestream to bring attention to the case and develop a strategy to pressure authorities to investigate the case with more rigor. The livestream was also designed to get The Brunswick News to publish a more complete version of who Arbery was.

At one point early in the livestream, the brothers appeared on the screen side by side: Richards in Little Rock and Vaughn in Brunswick. The coach, 39, talked about Arbery’s smile. About what a leader he was on the field. About how Arbery would make fun of him if that would help lighten the mood in the huddle or in Vaughn’s U.S. history or black studies classes.

Then he talked about the last time he saw Arbery. It was a Friday in November 2019. He saw his former player’s 5-foot-11, 165-pound body running the streets of Brunswick. Vaughn, who liked to run on game days, gave chase, but there was no catching Arbery.

“Maud was running like a deer,” he said.

Vaughn got emotional as he was wrapping up. “I want Maud to know, I run with Maud. That same strength, that same endurance he used to run these sidewalks with, ‘Maud, man, I run with you!’ I run with Maud. I run with Maud.”

“That’s a great hashtag: ‘Run With Maud,’ ” Richards said. “I love it.” A slogan had been born.

In New York, Baker, 25, was watching the livestream. Arbery’s best friend and former teammate was still struggling with the circumstances of his death. The next day, April 4, Baker created the I Run With Maud Facebook page to reclaim the narrative of Arbery’s life.

The team behind I Run With Maud started with Baker, Vaughn and Richards. They were joined by Frazier and another one of Arbery’s cousins, Josiah Watts. They were five black men doing this work for Arbery, but also for themselves and their own children or future children.

“We have to set ourselves up and encourage the younger generation, and even people that’s older than us to these action steps,” Frazier said. Over the next month, they rallied other supporters, including the three NFL defensive backs who played at Brunswick High with either Arbery or Marcus Jr. — Coleman, Walker and Slay.

“The friends and teammates I grew up with contacted me and said, ‘Hey, man, we got to get this truth out. It didn’t go down the way they said and these guys [the McMichaels] were part of law enforcement,’ ” Coleman told The Undefeated. “They’re trying to kick it under the rug.”

Coleman, Walker and Slay began raising awareness through their social media feeds, including promoting the #IRunWithMaud hashtag.

“And I know a lot of people in Brunswick wanted justice,” Coleman said. “And they put together that march to get the word out. That’s amazing for my city. I’ve never ever seen anything like that. I don’t want to say the [shooting incident] was positive, but what the city did was positive. They actually came together and said we have to get justice for Ahmaud.”

In an interview, Slay added: “It’s sad that it took a death to make it happen. It is sad that it had to be that way, but it’s a change happening. You can feel it. Some losses you have to take to have successes in the future. Our ancestors, they all had to take certain things so we can have it better. But this is for his nephews and younger people can have a better future.”

“Without those football guys working to bring attention to this case, none of this would have happened,” said S. Lee Merritt, Cooper-Jones’ attorney. “They were fighting for him first, long before anyone else.”

Arbery’s high school teammates got The Brunswick News to print additional information on Arbery and to acknowledge the paper had mishandled that all-important April 2 article. “I’m more than willing to admit we didn’t handle that story the best,” Buddy Hughes, the managing editor of The Brunswick News, told The Undefeated.

National attention came on April 26 in an in-depth piece in The New York Times. But it wasn’t the result of NFL players pulling strings. The story came about after Watts, Arbery’s cousin, sent an “anguished email” to a food reporter he knew at The New York Times. That reporter tipped off the paper’s Atlanta bureau chief, Richard Fausset, Watts said.

“He asked me what I think happened,” Watts said. “I said it was murder in broad daylight.”

“The first person I saw retweet the article was Bernice King,” Watts said, referring to the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center. “Now it’s becoming something bigger. We get messages from all over the world, from France to Germany. We hope that this will change the consensus and lead to accountability and somehow this will [lead to] political reforms.”

Two weeks later came another break in the case. A radio station obtained video of the shooting that had been shot by Bryan. Two days later, the McMichaels were both arrested. Two weeks later, Bryan was arrested, too. All three are charged with murder and aggravated assault and are being held in the Glynn County jail without bond. A judge has ruled that there is enough evidence for the case to proceed to the trial court. And the U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing whether it should bring federal hate crime charges.

In television interviews, at protests and in court hearings, Cooper-Jones is the picture of solemnity, an unflappable woman fighting for justice for the son she lost. She has long braids and her face shows little sign of aging. When she smiles, she looks like Arbery. “The time to grieve is not now,” she said. “I have to keep pushing because I knew if it was me or anybody that he loved, he would do the same.”

She is happier with the direction of the case now. Cobb County prosecutors, aided by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, have made it clear that they think Arbery was murdered in cold blood and that race was a motivating factor in the killing.

“Ahmaud would just be so proud to have Ms. Wanda as a mother,” if he saw how she has fought for justice, said his friend Baker. “He already was proud of Ms. Wanda as a mother when he was alive. But you know, he would just be so, so proud, man, just to see all the love and support and how hard his mom is fighting to get justice for him.”

Two weeks after Arbery’s death, Cooper-Jones put the home she bought when Arbery was 12 up for sale. “Each time I go into my home, I go into his room and I look into the direction where he was lying in the bed when I saw him last.”

That was the day before his death. She was headed to Dallas on a work trip. “I left on a Saturday morning to go off for some training. It was before dawn,” she said. “Ahmaud was still in bed. I went to Ahmaud’s room door like I always do when I’m leaving. I said, ‘Quez, I’m leaving. I’ll be back in a couple days, and I love you.’

“His last words to me was, ‘I love you, too.’ ”

Others try to be there for her. Because she doesn’t get emotional, it’s sometimes hard for them to figure out what she’s thinking. “My lowest point is when I have reflections on how the local authorities handled me, how they handled my family,” she related. “They took my calls of pain knowing they had no interest of helping me.”

Cooper-Jones refuses to watch the video of her son being shot. She just wants what she says is a corrupt government in Glynn County to be cleaned up.

“Justice, to me, would be having all hands involved in jail, in prison, and not just one, two, three people, everybody,” she said.

Her other son misses his brother. He notes that Arbery died young, just like his hero, Taylor, who was shot and killed at age 24 when his house was robbed.

“I know they’re both up there in heaven,” Marcus Jr. said wistfully. “I know they’re telling jokes and throwing a football around a little bit up there. “

And even though Arbery never made it to the NFL, he’s changing the world because he fought for his life against all odds, his brother said.

“The funny thing is, my brother always said that he was going to be a legend, and he just always believed that, man,” Marcus Jr. said. “And I hate that it had to be in this situation, but if I had to tell him, ‘Bro, your dream came true.’ “