This...
Sports Debate: Are we TOO forgiving of Ray Lewis involvement in a past murder case?
- Thread starter playahaitian
- Start date
This...
My boy thinks this nigga is a fraud and part of me agrees to a certain extent. Ray knew what happened that night, not saying he did it but he knew his boys had stab those two brothas. That makes you an accessory, none of those niggas got jail time and they should of. I mean after reading this story it makes you think about the other side...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2013/01/10/ray-lewis-baltimore-ravens-atlanta-murder-2000/1566198/
Priscilla Lollar still doesn't believe her son is dead
Any day now, she hopes he might finally return from Atlanta, walking through the door of her home in Akron, Ohio, as if nothing happened on the morning of Jan. 31, 2000.
"If I truly accept that he's not coming back ... " says Lollar, her voice trailing off. "I don't discuss him in the past. I don't really acknowledge anything."
Deep down, she knows he's gone. She knows it every time she turns on the television and sees Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis — a reminder that her son, Richard, has been dead for 13 years, stabbed to death outside a nightclub in Atlanta, along with his friend from Akron, Jacinth Baker.
RETIREMENT: Commissioner has a job for Lewis
Their murders remain unsolved. But as the anniversary of their deaths approaches — and as Lewis dances into the sunset of his NFL career — the victims' relatives are still seething at him. While Priscilla Lollar says she's "numb" to Lewis, others want answers. And justice.
"My nephew was brutally beaten and murdered and nobody is paying for it," Baker's uncle, Greg Wilson, told USA TODAY Sports. "Everything is so fresh in our mind, it's just like it happened yesterday. We'll never forget this."
Only Lewis pleaded guilty in relation to the case: for obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor. He originally was charged with two counts of murder but struck a deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against two of his companions that night, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.
Lewis never directly linked his two friends to the killings, and they were acquitted. Lewis had testified that Oakley, Sweeting and another man had gone to a sporting goods store the previous day to buy knives. Baker's blood later was found in Lewis' limo. Having fled the crime scene, Lewis told the limo's passengers to "keep their mouths shut." The white suit Lewis was wearing that night — on Super Bowl Sunday — never was found.
"I'm not trying to end my career like this," Lewis said in his hotel that night, according to the testimony of a female passenger in the limo.
He didn't. For his punishment, Lewis received one year of probation and a $250,000 fine by the NFL.
Lewis declined to comment when asked about the subject Thursday by USA TODAY Sports. Messages left for agents and attorneys representing him were not returned. Oakley, recently living in Atlanta, didn't return messages seeking comment. A relative of Sweeting, living in Miami, hung up when reached by USA TODAY Sports. And the prosecutor, Paul Howard, declined a request to be interviewed.
Said Lewis: "You want to talk to me about something that happened 13 years ago right now?"
Lewis was more circumspect about the incident in a 2010 interview with The Baltimore Sun. "I'm telling you, no day leaves this Earth without me asking God to ease the pain of anybody who was affected by that whole ordeal." he said. "He's a God who tests people — not that he put me in that situation, because he didn't make me go nowhere. I put myself in that situation."
In those 13 years, Lewis has not only rehabilitated his image but become an iconic figure for his dominating play and leadership. His 17-year career is likely to be immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, about 20 miles south of Akron, where Lollar and Baker are buried near their families.
Ravens fans express their gratitude to Ray Lewis in his final home game before retiring. The linebacker has been honored by fans and others, including Commissioner Roger Goodell.(Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
Lewis, 37, will be eligible for induction five years after his retirement this season, which could come as soon as Saturday if the Ravens lose their playoff game at Denver. After announcing his retirement, Lewis has basked in the praise of adoring NFL fans. The crowd roared as he took a victory lap — and dance — around the stadium Sunday after beating the Indianapolis Colts. Commissioner Roger Goodell even said he wants to employ Lewis as a special adviser to himself because he's a "tremendous voice of reason."
Cindy Lollar-Owens, Richard Lollar's aunt, says Lewis' pending retirement prompted her Thursday to visit the funeral home, "because that's where my nephew retired."
Lollar-Owens says she doesn't know if Lewis did or didn't stab anybody — just that Lewis was there and that evidence suggests he was involved. For his part, Lewis denied guilt in the stabbing and said that he was unfairly targeted by Howard. Lewis said he didn't know who did the stabbings amid the push and pull of a crowded fight around 4 a.m.
It's not enough for some family members.
"Every time I see him, I think of my nephew," Lollar-Owens says.
The victims
Baker and Lollar were 21 and 24 at the times of their deaths, both having been stabbed several times in the heart and upper body.
Both had overcome personal struggles before that night. Lollar's mother had been in and out of prison, leaving Lollar-Owens and her mother to raise Richard. Both Lollar and Baker had criminal records with minor drug-related offenses.
But they moved from Akron to Atlanta in search of a better life. Lollar was trying to make it there as a barber, Baker as an artist. Lollar also was ready to have a family. His fiancé, Kellye Smith, was pregnant with his daughter, born about a month after his murder.
The daughter is now 12 and attends a private school near Atlanta. The family says it tries to shield her from the details of her father's death.
"She just knows her father is not here," says Katheryn Smith, mother of Kellye Smith. "She doesn't really know what happened. So far, we've kept most of it from her."
Katheryn Smith says she harbors no grudge against Lewis, though the circumstances are different from those of other relatives.
Ray Lewis testifies in June 2000 during the murder trial of Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.(Photo: KIMBERLY SMITH, AFP/Getty Images)
Smith's family sued Lewis for $13 million and reached an undisclosed settlement on behalf of Richard Lollar's daughter in 2004.
In the suit, Lewis answered questions under oath in a deposition.
"His attitude during the deposition and everything wasn't that great," Katheryn Smith says of Lewis. "He disappointed me in the things he said. But I decided I wasn't the one (to judge). You have to leave that up to God, you know? He was there when it happened. I think they all got off fairly easy, but I don't have any hard feelings. I think he had a bad choice of friends."
She declined to elaborate on Lewis' deposition testimony, which has not been disclosed. Kellye Smith didn't return a message seeking comment. The settlement includes a confidentiality clause.
In another suit, Gladys Robinson, Baker's grandmother, also reached an undisclosed settlement with Lewis in 2003 after suing him for $10 million. She is now deceased.
Time with family
The way Priscilla Lollar remembers it, her son was supposed to come back to Akron soon after Jan. 31, 2000. He was supposed to pick her up and bring her down to Atlanta, where he could help keep her out of trouble. She says she was at a friend's house when her phone rang that day. It was her stepfather, who told her to come home.
When she learned from him what happened, "I didn't believe it," she says. She still doesn't. "I'm numb to the fact, even after all this time."
Cindy Lollar-Owens holds a photograph of her nephew, Richard Lollar, at the Sommerville Funeral Home in Akron, Ohio.(Photo: Eric P. Mull, USA TODAY Sports)
Her sister, Lollar-Owens, still wants to believe that Lewis feels their loss. Explaining why he was retiring now, Lewis recently said he wanted to spend more time with his children.
"I've seen where he was speaking about family and stuff, and I'm quite sure that every time he sees his son, he thinks about the son, grandson and father that we lost," Lollar-Owens says. "It would be impossible not to. Never a day goes by that we don't think about him."
For "closure," she wants to talk to Lewis. If she gets the chance, Lollar-Owens says she would ask him for money, not for herself, but to build a beauty salon in the name of her nephew, the barber.
"That would be my kind of closure, because I would have his memory," she says.
She also wants the truth. "I would like for him to tell one day exactly what happened," Lollar-Owens says.
It might help relieve the pain and anger for her mother, Joyce Lollar, who fell sick with heart trouble last month.
Joyce Lollar has bristled at the sight of Lewis on TV, a feeling shared by Greg Wilson, the uncle who helped raise Baker.
"I cringe. I just cringe," Wilson says of seeing Lewis on television. He's upset at how the case was handled by Howard. He also blames the NFL and Ravens. Prior to the next Super Bowl in 2001, then-Ravens coach Brian Billick criticized the news media for continuing to ask questions about the murders.
"The problem to me is America was more interested in him playing football instead of him paying the price for what he was involved in," Wilson says. "That's how we feel. They wanted nothing to happen to him. (Team owner) Art Modell didn't want his golden boy to suffer, so he could make money for him. So they did all they could to get him out of trouble."
The other men moved on after their acquittals. Oakley published an unedited book on the murders titled Murder After Super Bowl XXXIV, copyrighted in 2010.
Jacinth Baker had moved to Atlanta and was trying to make it as an artist when he was murdered in 2000.(Photo: Eric P. Mull, USA TODAY Sports)
In the book's opening, Oakley describes a chaotic scene with several fights breaking out. He describes Lewis imploring his friends to get into his limo. He describes a man staggering in the street holding his side before "falling backward onto the street." He later describes three other men getting into the limo saying, "We kicked they ass."
The rest of the book is unavailable and out of print.
Wilson says there was supposed to be a meeting with Lewis and the families after the trial. It never happened.
"We wouldn't have went to the meeting anyway," Wilson says. "It would not have been a peaceful meeting. … I'll be very upset if they induct (Lewis) into the Hall of Fame. There's other people out there that committed a lesser crime and they're sitting in jail."
Baker, his nephew, "was raised in our home," Wilson says. "We have no compassion for Ray Lewis, for Art Modell, for any of them. We don't want to see him."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2013/01/10/ray-lewis-baltimore-ravens-atlanta-murder-2000/1566198/
Priscilla Lollar still doesn't believe her son is dead
Any day now, she hopes he might finally return from Atlanta, walking through the door of her home in Akron, Ohio, as if nothing happened on the morning of Jan. 31, 2000.
"If I truly accept that he's not coming back ... " says Lollar, her voice trailing off. "I don't discuss him in the past. I don't really acknowledge anything."
Deep down, she knows he's gone. She knows it every time she turns on the television and sees Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis — a reminder that her son, Richard, has been dead for 13 years, stabbed to death outside a nightclub in Atlanta, along with his friend from Akron, Jacinth Baker.
RETIREMENT: Commissioner has a job for Lewis
Their murders remain unsolved. But as the anniversary of their deaths approaches — and as Lewis dances into the sunset of his NFL career — the victims' relatives are still seething at him. While Priscilla Lollar says she's "numb" to Lewis, others want answers. And justice.
"My nephew was brutally beaten and murdered and nobody is paying for it," Baker's uncle, Greg Wilson, told USA TODAY Sports. "Everything is so fresh in our mind, it's just like it happened yesterday. We'll never forget this."
Only Lewis pleaded guilty in relation to the case: for obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor. He originally was charged with two counts of murder but struck a deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against two of his companions that night, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.
Lewis never directly linked his two friends to the killings, and they were acquitted. Lewis had testified that Oakley, Sweeting and another man had gone to a sporting goods store the previous day to buy knives. Baker's blood later was found in Lewis' limo. Having fled the crime scene, Lewis told the limo's passengers to "keep their mouths shut." The white suit Lewis was wearing that night — on Super Bowl Sunday — never was found.
"I'm not trying to end my career like this," Lewis said in his hotel that night, according to the testimony of a female passenger in the limo.
He didn't. For his punishment, Lewis received one year of probation and a $250,000 fine by the NFL.
Lewis declined to comment when asked about the subject Thursday by USA TODAY Sports. Messages left for agents and attorneys representing him were not returned. Oakley, recently living in Atlanta, didn't return messages seeking comment. A relative of Sweeting, living in Miami, hung up when reached by USA TODAY Sports. And the prosecutor, Paul Howard, declined a request to be interviewed.
Said Lewis: "You want to talk to me about something that happened 13 years ago right now?"
Lewis was more circumspect about the incident in a 2010 interview with The Baltimore Sun. "I'm telling you, no day leaves this Earth without me asking God to ease the pain of anybody who was affected by that whole ordeal." he said. "He's a God who tests people — not that he put me in that situation, because he didn't make me go nowhere. I put myself in that situation."
In those 13 years, Lewis has not only rehabilitated his image but become an iconic figure for his dominating play and leadership. His 17-year career is likely to be immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, about 20 miles south of Akron, where Lollar and Baker are buried near their families.
Ravens fans express their gratitude to Ray Lewis in his final home game before retiring. The linebacker has been honored by fans and others, including Commissioner Roger Goodell.(Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
Lewis, 37, will be eligible for induction five years after his retirement this season, which could come as soon as Saturday if the Ravens lose their playoff game at Denver. After announcing his retirement, Lewis has basked in the praise of adoring NFL fans. The crowd roared as he took a victory lap — and dance — around the stadium Sunday after beating the Indianapolis Colts. Commissioner Roger Goodell even said he wants to employ Lewis as a special adviser to himself because he's a "tremendous voice of reason."
Cindy Lollar-Owens, Richard Lollar's aunt, says Lewis' pending retirement prompted her Thursday to visit the funeral home, "because that's where my nephew retired."
Lollar-Owens says she doesn't know if Lewis did or didn't stab anybody — just that Lewis was there and that evidence suggests he was involved. For his part, Lewis denied guilt in the stabbing and said that he was unfairly targeted by Howard. Lewis said he didn't know who did the stabbings amid the push and pull of a crowded fight around 4 a.m.
It's not enough for some family members.
"Every time I see him, I think of my nephew," Lollar-Owens says.
The victims
Baker and Lollar were 21 and 24 at the times of their deaths, both having been stabbed several times in the heart and upper body.
Both had overcome personal struggles before that night. Lollar's mother had been in and out of prison, leaving Lollar-Owens and her mother to raise Richard. Both Lollar and Baker had criminal records with minor drug-related offenses.
But they moved from Akron to Atlanta in search of a better life. Lollar was trying to make it there as a barber, Baker as an artist. Lollar also was ready to have a family. His fiancé, Kellye Smith, was pregnant with his daughter, born about a month after his murder.
The daughter is now 12 and attends a private school near Atlanta. The family says it tries to shield her from the details of her father's death.
"She just knows her father is not here," says Katheryn Smith, mother of Kellye Smith. "She doesn't really know what happened. So far, we've kept most of it from her."
Katheryn Smith says she harbors no grudge against Lewis, though the circumstances are different from those of other relatives.
Ray Lewis testifies in June 2000 during the murder trial of Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.(Photo: KIMBERLY SMITH, AFP/Getty Images)
Smith's family sued Lewis for $13 million and reached an undisclosed settlement on behalf of Richard Lollar's daughter in 2004.
In the suit, Lewis answered questions under oath in a deposition.
"His attitude during the deposition and everything wasn't that great," Katheryn Smith says of Lewis. "He disappointed me in the things he said. But I decided I wasn't the one (to judge). You have to leave that up to God, you know? He was there when it happened. I think they all got off fairly easy, but I don't have any hard feelings. I think he had a bad choice of friends."
She declined to elaborate on Lewis' deposition testimony, which has not been disclosed. Kellye Smith didn't return a message seeking comment. The settlement includes a confidentiality clause.
In another suit, Gladys Robinson, Baker's grandmother, also reached an undisclosed settlement with Lewis in 2003 after suing him for $10 million. She is now deceased.
Time with family
The way Priscilla Lollar remembers it, her son was supposed to come back to Akron soon after Jan. 31, 2000. He was supposed to pick her up and bring her down to Atlanta, where he could help keep her out of trouble. She says she was at a friend's house when her phone rang that day. It was her stepfather, who told her to come home.
When she learned from him what happened, "I didn't believe it," she says. She still doesn't. "I'm numb to the fact, even after all this time."
Cindy Lollar-Owens holds a photograph of her nephew, Richard Lollar, at the Sommerville Funeral Home in Akron, Ohio.(Photo: Eric P. Mull, USA TODAY Sports)
Her sister, Lollar-Owens, still wants to believe that Lewis feels their loss. Explaining why he was retiring now, Lewis recently said he wanted to spend more time with his children.
"I've seen where he was speaking about family and stuff, and I'm quite sure that every time he sees his son, he thinks about the son, grandson and father that we lost," Lollar-Owens says. "It would be impossible not to. Never a day goes by that we don't think about him."
For "closure," she wants to talk to Lewis. If she gets the chance, Lollar-Owens says she would ask him for money, not for herself, but to build a beauty salon in the name of her nephew, the barber.
"That would be my kind of closure, because I would have his memory," she says.
She also wants the truth. "I would like for him to tell one day exactly what happened," Lollar-Owens says.
It might help relieve the pain and anger for her mother, Joyce Lollar, who fell sick with heart trouble last month.
Joyce Lollar has bristled at the sight of Lewis on TV, a feeling shared by Greg Wilson, the uncle who helped raise Baker.
"I cringe. I just cringe," Wilson says of seeing Lewis on television. He's upset at how the case was handled by Howard. He also blames the NFL and Ravens. Prior to the next Super Bowl in 2001, then-Ravens coach Brian Billick criticized the news media for continuing to ask questions about the murders.
"The problem to me is America was more interested in him playing football instead of him paying the price for what he was involved in," Wilson says. "That's how we feel. They wanted nothing to happen to him. (Team owner) Art Modell didn't want his golden boy to suffer, so he could make money for him. So they did all they could to get him out of trouble."
The other men moved on after their acquittals. Oakley published an unedited book on the murders titled Murder After Super Bowl XXXIV, copyrighted in 2010.
Jacinth Baker had moved to Atlanta and was trying to make it as an artist when he was murdered in 2000.(Photo: Eric P. Mull, USA TODAY Sports)
In the book's opening, Oakley describes a chaotic scene with several fights breaking out. He describes Lewis imploring his friends to get into his limo. He describes a man staggering in the street holding his side before "falling backward onto the street." He later describes three other men getting into the limo saying, "We kicked they ass."
The rest of the book is unavailable and out of print.
Wilson says there was supposed to be a meeting with Lewis and the families after the trial. It never happened.
"We wouldn't have went to the meeting anyway," Wilson says. "It would not have been a peaceful meeting. … I'll be very upset if they induct (Lewis) into the Hall of Fame. There's other people out there that committed a lesser crime and they're sitting in jail."
Baker, his nephew, "was raised in our home," Wilson says. "We have no compassion for Ray Lewis, for Art Modell, for any of them. We don't want to see him."
These articles with the family are bullshit.
Painting the victims as these nice boys who did nothing wrong.
Both of the dead had long criminal rap sheets...and beleive that shit about moving to Atlanta to "turn their life around" if you want to.
Them cats started the fight...nobody is mentioning that one of them broke a champagne bottle over one of Lewis' boys head...something that if the bottle was too thick and hit dude in the wrong spot could have killed him. And like someone pointed out, someone in these "nice rehabilitated" guys crew lit up the limo with gunshots.
And Ray basically snitched when he did testify...he flat out said that one of his boys had a knife between his fingers and told him "every time they hit me, I hit them" while making the stabbing motion with his fist.
Ray initially lied yes. But people completely ignore the testimony he did give as if he didn't say anything at all.
Painting the victims as these nice boys who did nothing wrong.
Both of the dead had long criminal rap sheets...and beleive that shit about moving to Atlanta to "turn their life around" if you want to.
Them cats started the fight...nobody is mentioning that one of them broke a champagne bottle over one of Lewis' boys head...something that if the bottle was too thick and hit dude in the wrong spot could have killed him. And like someone pointed out, someone in these "nice rehabilitated" guys crew lit up the limo with gunshots.
And Ray basically snitched when he did testify...he flat out said that one of his boys had a knife between his fingers and told him "every time they hit me, I hit them" while making the stabbing motion with his fist.
Ray initially lied yes. But people completely ignore the testimony he did give as if he didn't say anything at all.
There are still some bitter white people over this. Had a former HS coach talking nonsense and saying that Lewis was convicted. I'm like nah he pled guilty to a obstruction of justice - misdemeanor, and he's like no, they found him guilty or in connection to those murders and he paid the family off. Again, I said nah man you've got twisted, and then his son went on to say, well he's a snitch. The his friend said 'he's no man of god having kids with different women', no role model. Notice the pattern? They're looking for anything to not allow Ray live his life. I don't want to call him a fraud or say that he beat the 'system', we'll never know the truth, but to tear the man down b/c he wants to dance around happily and praise the lord every second he gets. I say, PROPS, Mr. Lewis.
He didn't do it
Mufuckas always trying to assassinate a black mans character
Mufuckas always trying to assassinate a black mans character
I don't know him. Never had to forgive him.
Gs3
Gs3
The "victims'" families reminds me of a rap song I once heard. It was a song dedicated to their dead homie, and in the song they were rapping about the crazy shit he used to do, like robbing dice games, robbing cats in the hood, and slapping bitches for no reason. I remember thinking, "Damn, no wonder that nigga's dead."
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So if a bitch is willing to take a payoff why do YOU care?
Funny that is the whole thread nobody brought up Chris Mullins.
Man everyone is always trying to tarnish a dude s shine.....
I read that bullshit article. Why bring the shit up now after 13 years? There's a part in the article where one of the family members would like to meet Ray Lewis and ask him for some money for a beauty salon or some shit.
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Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using Tapatalk 2
Forgive me...but...
nah that's real t
they acting like dude moved down there and he got stabbed up at a church building groundbreaking
or he was witnessing door to door or something and had never had any trouble.
ray did change. he was young and having money and he brought his hood folks with him to party
them dumb asses almost ruined his life
so he did turn to god
and he says that shit so often to remind him FUCK all this keeping it real shit
i bet he don't hang around the knuckleheads anymore
and i bet he was on his knees praying harder than a motherfucker for his freedom
he's the one that said god if you get me out of this ima praise and worship you publicly for the rest of my days...
he was the one that kept that promise..instead of just saying "thanks" and then going back to the dumb shit
A person's belief in a higher power doesn't lead to atheists, as a group, not having respect for that person. Not to compare MLK to Ray Lewis of course, but do you think that atheists have no respect for him, even though he was a man of God?
If Ray is indeed innocent...which in the eyes of the law he IS, then he shouldn't be labeled a "murderer" or anything of the sort.
However, I do feel that there is a distinct "double-standard" when it comes to those individuals who have a problem with "snitching".
I've heard some people say "well, he shouldn't have to lose his career over the stupidity of those who were with him" so I suppose it justifies him testifying against them in their minds.
However those same people will jump all over somebody like T.I. or Prodigy or Gucci Mane...or anyone else they even SUSPECT has "snitched".
What's up with the double standard? Again, I'm not one of those "stop snitching" dudes, but for dudes that DO have a problem with snitching...why does Ray get a pass because of HIS career. If ANYBODY is facing a significant time in prison or even LIFE...are they not as justified as Ray to "snitch" for a deal???? IJS
However, I do feel that there is a distinct "double-standard" when it comes to those individuals who have a problem with "snitching".
I've heard some people say "well, he shouldn't have to lose his career over the stupidity of those who were with him" so I suppose it justifies him testifying against them in their minds.
However those same people will jump all over somebody like T.I. or Prodigy or Gucci Mane...or anyone else they even SUSPECT has "snitched".
What's up with the double standard? Again, I'm not one of those "stop snitching" dudes, but for dudes that DO have a problem with snitching...why does Ray get a pass because of HIS career. If ANYBODY is facing a significant time in prison or even LIFE...are they not as justified as Ray to "snitch" for a deal???? IJS
Has anyone actually research that case?
The two mutha fucka that did the stabbing were aquited
The two mutha fucka that did the stabbing were aquited
so if they did the stabbing and were acquitted
why the fuck are we talking about ray lewis who didn't do anything?
why is he being blamed???
so if they did the stabbing and were acquitted
why the fuck are we talking about ray lewis who didn't do anything?
why is he being blamed???
Society loves to tear down
Really just based on jealousy and pure hatred
I'm straight sick of that "my baby a never hurt nobody" bs. Those guys had a rap sheets long as somebody's arm. They were lifelong criminals, and now they're not. Fuck 'em. my heart doesn't believe every criminal to gets killed. Like somebody said they thought it was 1 way and it was the other way, Marlo Stanfield style. Also, like somebody said It wasn't even ray but the people who were with him, anybody who thinks different can bite it.
A week later, on Oct. 2, Lewis is sitting at a table in the lunchroom at the Ravens' practice facility in Owings Mills, Md. "Then I watch TV," he is saying about the aftermath of his trial six years ago, "and I hear [one victim's] younger brother say, 'Oh, Ray Lewis is going to get his one day. Just like he killed my brother, he going to die.' This is on TV, a 13-year-old child. All because of what y'all wanted to report that was dead-ass wrong! So the rest of my life I don't know if somebody's going to walk up to me and put a pistol to my head. For the rest of my life."
You could say he's paranoid, except that after District Attorney Paul Howard dropped the murder charges against him for the deaths of two men from Akron, Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, Lewis testified against the remaining defendants, his former friends Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting. Both men were acquitted in June 2000, and that fall Sweeting released a rap song lambasting Lewis as a snitch, reportedly with such lyrics as Oakley should have stabbed ya, and If I knew what I know now, it'd have been three bodies. In February 2005 the FBI investigated death threats e-mailed to Lewis's charitable foundation.
You could say he's paranoid, except that after District Attorney Paul Howard dropped the murder charges against him for the deaths of two men from Akron, Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, Lewis testified against the remaining defendants, his former friends Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting. Both men were acquitted in June 2000, and that fall Sweeting released a rap song lambasting Lewis as a snitch, reportedly with such lyrics as Oakley should have stabbed ya, and If I knew what I know now, it'd have been three bodies. In February 2005 the FBI investigated death threats e-mailed to Lewis's charitable foundation.
*****
Yet it's that passion--the obvious relish Lewis takes in football's brutal essence--that makes it easy for those who only see him on TV to believe him guilty of murder. Early in the morning of Jan. 31, 2000, Lewis and a group of acquaintances, including Oakley and Sweeting, exchanged words outside the Cobalt Lounge with another group that included Baker and Lollar. Within minutes Baker and Lollar had been stabbed to death. Lewis's panicked group piled into his stretch limousine and sped off, gunfire blowing out one of the tires. Lewis told everyone in the car to shut up about what they'd seen, and during his initial interviews with police he gave false information. The limo driver at first told police he saw Lewis strike one of the victims, then recanted. Lewis maintains that he saw no one being stabbed and had acted only as a peacemaker.
Sunseria Smith was in Hawaii, on the phone with her son, when the police came to the house where Lewis was staying. She heard her son yell, "What are you doing?" and then, "Mama, I didn't do nothing!" before the phone dropped. When she visited Lewis at the Fulton County detention center for the first time she put her hand on the glass separating them and said, "Is there any blood on your hands?" Lewis told her he had nothing to do with the crimes. "And I said, 'That's all I need to know,'" Smith says.
The prosecution's case against Lewis fell apart quickly, and the murder charges were dropped. Lewis pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor obstruction of justice, was sentenced to a year's probation and testified in the case against Oakley and Sweeting. As he walked down the courthouse steps in June 2000, Ray turned to Sunseria and said, "Mama, you have a changed man." In '04 Lewis settled civil suits with members of both victims' families for roughly $2 million. He addressed the families during mediation for the settlement, at once expressing sorrow and raging over his certainty that he'd been prosecuted solely because he was rich. Still, some family members will never be soothed by the settlement or Lewis's perceived transformation. "I hope he can actively feel what it means to have a loved one taken away, the way my nephew was," says Lollar's aunt, Thomasaina Threatt.
"The saddest thing?" Lewis says now. "Take me out of that equation, you got two young dead black kids on the street. The second sad part is, because of the court system and the prosecutor's lies, I got two families hating me for something I didn't have a hand in, and the people who killed their children are free. The people who killed their children could be having dinner with them and they'd never know. Because all they know is the big name, Ray Lewis."
Hero to villain, good to bad, is a very quick walk in America. The reverse is much more difficult; the fall is always easier to believe than the redemption, if only because nobody wants to be played for a sucker. Yet suddenly Cindy Lollar-Owens is willing to try. She helped raise Richard Lollar in Akron and for six years has been a persistent voice blaming Lewis for the deaths of her nephew and Baker. In 2001 she stood outside the stadium in Tampa where Lewis would win his Super Bowl MVP award, holding a photo collage of her nephew. More than once when Baltimore played in Cleveland she passed out fliers there demanding justice.
Sunseria Smith was in Hawaii, on the phone with her son, when the police came to the house where Lewis was staying. She heard her son yell, "What are you doing?" and then, "Mama, I didn't do nothing!" before the phone dropped. When she visited Lewis at the Fulton County detention center for the first time she put her hand on the glass separating them and said, "Is there any blood on your hands?" Lewis told her he had nothing to do with the crimes. "And I said, 'That's all I need to know,'" Smith says.
The prosecution's case against Lewis fell apart quickly, and the murder charges were dropped. Lewis pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor obstruction of justice, was sentenced to a year's probation and testified in the case against Oakley and Sweeting. As he walked down the courthouse steps in June 2000, Ray turned to Sunseria and said, "Mama, you have a changed man." In '04 Lewis settled civil suits with members of both victims' families for roughly $2 million. He addressed the families during mediation for the settlement, at once expressing sorrow and raging over his certainty that he'd been prosecuted solely because he was rich. Still, some family members will never be soothed by the settlement or Lewis's perceived transformation. "I hope he can actively feel what it means to have a loved one taken away, the way my nephew was," says Lollar's aunt, Thomasaina Threatt.
"The saddest thing?" Lewis says now. "Take me out of that equation, you got two young dead black kids on the street. The second sad part is, because of the court system and the prosecutor's lies, I got two families hating me for something I didn't have a hand in, and the people who killed their children are free. The people who killed their children could be having dinner with them and they'd never know. Because all they know is the big name, Ray Lewis."
Hero to villain, good to bad, is a very quick walk in America. The reverse is much more difficult; the fall is always easier to believe than the redemption, if only because nobody wants to be played for a sucker. Yet suddenly Cindy Lollar-Owens is willing to try. She helped raise Richard Lollar in Akron and for six years has been a persistent voice blaming Lewis for the deaths of her nephew and Baker. In 2001 she stood outside the stadium in Tampa where Lewis would win his Super Bowl MVP award, holding a photo collage of her nephew. More than once when Baltimore played in Cleveland she passed out fliers there demanding justice.
****
But last month, after restating that belief in a phone interview, she called back. "This is my conscience," she said. "I've been praying on it, and I'm saying I believe [ Lewis] was totally set up. I didn't want to say nothing; I was worried about how my family would feel. Come to realize, I've got to live with myself."
Lollar-Owens says that before her father died of cancer in 2002, he told her she had to speak about her change of heart. It has taken her four years. She has talked to Lewis only once, by phone after the 2001 Super Bowl. She says he called to tell her he was sorry for her loss. "There was something in his voice," she says. "I just felt he was innocent."
Ray Lewis knows what his problem is. He'll tell you up front about his faults, about how he was wrong for years in the way he allowed "broke people" to get close enough to jeopardize his career and his reputation, and how he "would walk around and might not treat a woman the right way." But to him those are symptoms of a larger malfunction. It's now conventional wisdom to decry the prevalence of single-mother households in black society, the lack of strong father figures for young males. Lewis offers himself up as Exhibit A. "I had no one at home to confirm, help, release, whatever," he says. "I've got six kids? I've never had a conversation with a man about a woman--ever. I've never had a man sit down and say, 'Son, let me tell you about women.'"
Lollar-Owens says that before her father died of cancer in 2002, he told her she had to speak about her change of heart. It has taken her four years. She has talked to Lewis only once, by phone after the 2001 Super Bowl. She says he called to tell her he was sorry for her loss. "There was something in his voice," she says. "I just felt he was innocent."
Ray Lewis knows what his problem is. He'll tell you up front about his faults, about how he was wrong for years in the way he allowed "broke people" to get close enough to jeopardize his career and his reputation, and how he "would walk around and might not treat a woman the right way." But to him those are symptoms of a larger malfunction. It's now conventional wisdom to decry the prevalence of single-mother households in black society, the lack of strong father figures for young males. Lewis offers himself up as Exhibit A. "I had no one at home to confirm, help, release, whatever," he says. "I've got six kids? I've never had a conversation with a man about a woman--ever. I've never had a man sit down and say, 'Son, let me tell you about women.'"
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shit pops off in the club, niggas get into it outside, that's how shit goes. the niggas that got killed fucked with the wrong one that night...
I was personally there that night at I think the name of the club at that time was Otto's. Ray came thru the party with a full length white mink coat in Atlanta mind you, with some real Miami looking niggas with him. All them niggas was iced up, and looking like I wish a nigga wood. Dude them popped off and Ray's people let them niggas have it. Dude ain't innocent, meaning he knew them dudes and was with them niggas, but those dudes that got killed was looking for trouble, and they barked up the right tree.
sad story man for the family members. however, if you was ray lewis and your boys shot some dudes on would you cooperate? will it depend on if its self defense? or if your boys started it?
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