Family and friends of Jerry Brown continue to mourn the loss of the Dallas Cowboys linebacker since the Dec. 8 drunk driving accident that took his young life. Brown's best friend, and teammate Josh Brent, wrecked his vehicle with Brown in the passenger seat in a high-speed early morning crash, and has been charged with intoxicated manslaughter, according to Yahoo News.
Brent was released on $500,000 bond on Sunday. The nose tackle visited the Cowboys facility on Monday, was checked out by trainers, and spoke to head coach Jason Garrett, who said that Brent was "very distraught."
According to Yahoo News, drunk driving is the biggest legal issue effecting players in the NFL. A study by the San Diego Union-Tribune found that 112 of the 385 NFL player arrests (29 percent) between 2000 and 2008 involved drunk driving, Yahoo News reported.
Sadly, this wasn't Brent's first brush with a DUI. The athlete plead guilty in 2009 to a DUI while in college. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail, community service and ordered to sit in on a victim's impact group, said Yahoo News.
"What we want to do as an organization, as players, as coaches and this entire organization is let him know he should feel supported everywhere he turns," Garrett said of Brent on Monday. "That's what we want to express to him. It's a very challenging situation for him. He and Jerry are best friends. They have known each other since college. They were very close in college, very close since they've been here together, and it's a really, really difficult situation for him. We want to make him feel that there are people around him who can help him get through this thing day by day."
Now, in a selfless, symbolic gesture of forgiveness, Brown's mother is doing the unthinkable. Stacey Jackson, Brown's mother, has asked Brent to attend her son's funeral service by her side.
According to multiple reports, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones sent his private plane so that Brown's family could arrive in Dallas for a Tuesday memorial service, and Jackson asked Brent to meet the family at the airport, ride with her to the service, and sit with the family while Brown is memorialized.
"I was upset, but I realized that our youth today are young and stupid, and we were all once that age, and we've all done things we're not proud of," Jackson said on Monday's "Piers Morgan Tonight" show on CNN.
"I realized that everyone thinks they're invincible, and everyone thinks, 'it's not going to happen to me.' I know Josh Brent, and he's been part of our family since Jerry went to the University of Illinois -- all I can do is to pray for him and his family. I know [Brent] is hurting just as much as we are, because [he] and Jerry were like brothers."
Meanwhile, shocking new details from the night of Brent's accident are just starting to emerge.
Eyewitness Stacee McWilliams gave an in depth interview to the Dallas Morning News describing the tragic scene in vivid detail, and contradicting reports of Brent's heroism following the accident.
McWilliams says she was on her way home from celebrating her birthday when she came upon the wreckage of Brent's car. She claims she had to coerce Brent to pull his friend from his burning vehicle.
"I didn't know Jerry in life. I never heard of him, I didn't know who he was," McWilliams said to the Morning News.
"But I want people to understand that Josh Brent is not a hero. I keep hearing reports of how he was there to pull his friend from the fire, but he had to be coerced and pushed and begged and pleaded to get his friend out of the fire. And when he pulled him out, he just left him in the street. He didn't tell him 'Hang in there, help is on the way'. Nothing. He just left him there and I want the magnitude of that to be understood," she added.
More of McWilliams's eyewitness account of the details from the crime scene can be found here.
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