{"id":18420,"date":"2012-12-03T15:14:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T20:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18420"},"modified":"2012-12-03T15:14:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T20:14:44","slug":"police-kansas-city-chiefs-player-shoots-girlfriend-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18420","title":{"rendered":"Police: Kansas City Chiefs Player Shoots Girlfriend, Self"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 It began like any other Saturday for the Kansas City Chiefs during the NFL season, their general manager and coach at work early to put final touches on this weekend\u2019s gameplan. Then they got a call to hurry to the parking lot. The two men rushed through the glass doors of Chiefs headquarters and came face-to-face with linebacker<strong> Jovan Belcher<\/strong>, holding a handgun to his head.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Belcher<\/strong> had already killed his girlfriend and sped the short distance to Arrowhead Stadium, right past a security checkpoint guarding the entrance. Upon finding his bosses, <strong>Belcher<\/strong> thanked general manager <strong>Scott Pioli <\/strong>and head coach <strong>Romeo Crennel <\/strong>for giving him a chance in the NFL. Then he turned away and pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities did not release a possible motive while piecing together the case, other than to note that <strong>Belcher<\/strong> and his girlfriend, 22-year-old<strong> Kasandra M. Perkins<\/strong>, had been arguing frequently. The two of them left behind a 3-month-old girl. She was being cared for by family. The 25-year-old<strong> Belcher<\/strong> was from West Babylon, N.Y., and played college football at Maine. He signed with the Chiefs as an undrafted free agent, made the team and hung around the past four years, eventually moving into the starting lineup. He played in all 11 games this season.<\/p>\n<p>The drama unfolded early Saturday when authorities received a call from a woman who said her daughter had been shot multiple times at a residence about five miles from the Arrowhead complex. The call came from <strong>Belcher\u2019s<\/strong> mother, who referred to the victim as her daughter. Police then got a phone call from the Chiefs\u2019 training facility, and <strong>Belcher\u2019s<\/strong> description matched the suspect description from the initial address. <strong>Snapp <\/strong>said officers pulled into the practice facility parking lot in a matter of minutes, in time to witness the suicide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong>Pioli<\/strong> and <strong>Crennel<\/strong> and another coach or employee was standing outside and appeared to be talking to him,\u201d <strong>Snapp<\/strong> said. \u201cThe suspect began to walk in the opposite direction of the coaches and the officers and that\u2019s when they heard the gunshot. It appears he took his own life.\u201d The coaches told police they never felt in any danger. \u201cThey said the player was actually thanking them for everything they\u2019d done for him,\u201d <strong>Snapp<\/strong> said. \u201cHe was thanking them and everything. That\u2019s when he walked away and shot himself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 It began like any other Saturday for the Kansas City Chiefs during the NFL season, their general manager and coach at work early to put final touches on this weekend\u2019s gameplan. Then they got a call to hurry to the parking lot. The two men rushed through the glass doors of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}