It's Not Every Day You Get to See a Former NFL Player Flip Out While Being Taken into Custody on a Plane for the Murder of His Mother. But Here's Sergio Brown Doing Just That.
In case you don't remember, Sergio Brown was a defensive back from Notre Dame who enjoyed a journeyman career in the NFL, playing almost 100 games for four different teams over seven years. Though until this week, he was always remembered best for being the guy who's shit Rob Gronkowski was apparently sick of, so he famously (Gronk's words) "threw him out the club":
That all changed a few days ago. Now Brown will never be remembered for anything but the horrifying criminal charges that were filed on him, for one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, matricide:
Source - Former NFL player Sergio Brown was arrested Tuesday after a warrant was issued for first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Natalie Kainz of NBC News reports.
Brown, 35, had been missing since Myrtle Jean Simmons-Brown’s death last month….
Mexican law enforcement officers … deported him after authorities in Illinois obtained a felony fugitive arrest warrant.
The body of his mother was found in a creek behind her Maywood home on Sept. 16, and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office determined she died from injuries related to an assault. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Now comes the newest update in this horrible true crime drama. The video of him actually being taken into custody by Mexican authorities:
CBS8, San Diego -Cell phone video shows former NFL player Sergio Brown fighting with Mexican officers on an airplane Sunday in Mexico City as they tried to extradite him back to the United States. …
Brown can be heard screaming he’s being kidnapped during the incident, which occurred on a flight that was supposed to take him to Tijuana. He was being extradited back to the United States to face murder charges in the death of his mother, Myrdle Brown, 73.
“They’re kidnapping me… I'm from Chicago,” Brown yells inside the jet plane. “I should not be going to Tijuana.”
Two Mexican immigration officers are seen in the video fighting with the former NFL defensive back. “Let me go. This is kidnapping,” Brown said. …
The officers apparently were trying to get Brown to Tijuana to hand him off to U.S. officers. …
Brown, 35, had been missing for the past month and posted on his Instagram account that his mother's murder was fake news. Then, in early October, TMZ Sports said it obtained video of Brown dancing and partying in Tulum, Mexico.
Obviously all that matters is that an elderly woman's life has been taken from her. And that, as the saying goes, may justice be done though the heavens fall. If Brown is guilty of killing his own mother, not enough bad things can happen to him. And it's hard on it's face to give him any sort of benefit of the doubt, given he denied she was even dead while going on the lam for month and dancing his ass off south of the border. But "presumption of innocence" and all that.
But the far less important part of this, is still strangely fascinating. How a guy could have so much going for him. To so gifted by the gods athletically and academically that he got to go to the best institution of higher learning in the world and play for (in the words of Fortune from Rudy) the finest football team in the land. Then be good enough to enjoy an NFL career that was exactly double the average length. But seven years later, end up freaking out on a commercial flight, spewing utter nonsense, screaming for help from no one in particular, as Mexico's Finest are trying to take him into custody. That's a hell of a legacy to leave. As well as a visual to always be remembered by. It's likely that the next time we see him, it'll be an image from a sketch artist in federal court as Brown gets sentenced for murdering the woman who brought him into this world and raised him. You won't see too many higher, steeper falls from grace than that.
Here's hoping Brown made the most of that month in Mexico. Because unless he tunnels out of jail and winds up on a beach in Zihuatanejo, it's safe to say it'll be his last. What's the last thing he said on that video? "Criminal confinement"? He better get used to it.