Pete Carroll mourns death of Joe McKnight, whom he once coached and recently tried to help
Dec 2, 2016, 9:10 PM | Updated: 9:14 pm
"He was a very special kid." Pete Carroll coached Joe McKnight at USC, talked to him three weeks before he was fatally shot Thursday. pic.twitter.com/sUHCi46SL5
— Brady Henderson (@BradyHenderson) December 3, 2016
RENTON – Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said he was hit hard by the news that former USC and NFL running back Joe McKnight was killed Thursday. Carroll coached McKnight in college and had spoken with him recently in an attempt to lend some help. He wished he could have done something to change the course of events that led McKnight back to a New Orleans suburb, where he was fatally shot during what is believed to be a road rage incident. He was 28.
“I talked to Joey about three weeks ago trying to help him with something and I just felt terrible with this news that I wasn’t able to do something that might have kept him in California. He was in Pasadena at the time,” Carroll said Friday. “This personally hit me that I wasn’t able to do something that might have made a difference to keep him away from where he was.
“I know a couple of the other guys that I heard from were also working with Joe and doing some stuff with him to trying to help him with a job and things like that that he was looking forward to and just none of us were able to pull it off. So I just feel a little extra connection to it.”
Carroll recruited McKnight to USC out of River Ridge, La., another New Orleans suburb, where he was considered the nation’s No. 1 prep running back. Carroll coached him from 2007 to 2009, before both left for the NFL. McKnight was a fourth-round pick by the Jets in 1010 and spent three seasons with the team before he was cut in 2013. He played in two games with the Chiefs in 2014 and spent the past CFL season with Edmonton and Saskatchewan. That ended last month.
According to the Associated Press, authorities said a 54-year-old man shot McKnight three times in the suburb of Terrytown after what witnesses described as a heated argument. The shooter, Ronald Gasser, was released overnight without being charged.
Carroll called McKnight’s death a “real tragedy.”
“He was a very special kid and he had some special difficulties coming along growing up and all that we all knew about it, and we just regarded the guy that he was, knowing the course that he went, he had to travel,” Carroll said. “And so for … us to lose Joe, it just hurts everybody. I talked to a lot of people and heard from all kinds of people and everybody felt exactly the same. They just felt so bad because he had a great heart, he was a great kid, he was fun to be around, fun-loving.
“But you just knew he had a lot of stuff to overcome and he was making it and he was overcoming stuff and he had a bit of a pro career and all that. And unfortunately this happened, so we’re going to miss him greatly. We’ll miss him greatly.”