Former USC football star Joe McKnight shot to death in New Orleans
Joe McKnight was a high school football legend who entered powerhouse USC in 2007 hyped as "the next Reggie Bush" -- a reference to the Trojans running back who won the Heisman Trophy just two years prior.
McKnight's life ended in violence this Thursday when he was shot to death after an argument at an intersection in the New Orleans area. He was 28 years old.
The broad-daylight shooting was reportedly called in at about 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon in Terrytown, Louisiana. Here are more awful details, via NOLA.com.
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A witness, who declined to give her name, said she was leaving a store in the area when she saw a man at the intersection yelling at another man, who was trying to apologize. The man who was yelling shot the other man more than once, she said.
She said the shooter shot the man, stood over him and said "I told you don't you f--- with me." Then he fired again, she said.
McKnight's USC career never quite lived up to the hype that preceded him, but he nonetheless was selected by the New York Jets in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He joined the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014, then later played for the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian Football League.
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Some of McKnight's former teams and fellow football players mourned him on Twitter after Thursday's sad news broke.
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While McKnight never became the football star many predicted him to be, his name is one that still rings a bell for sports fans far and wide. Most of us hadn't heard that name for some time -- until McKnight was mentioned again Thursday amid the most tragic of circumstances.
Here are his 2006 high school football highlights, which remain jaw-dropping a decade later.
Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
