Update:Now this is Crazy!
With some guys you meet in boxing, or in life for that matter, a sad end doesn’t come as a shock. Vernon Forrest was not that kind of person.
He never should have ended up face down in the street with a gun in his hand, which was where he was lying when he breathed his last breath Saturday night in Atlanta. He never should have ended up with his back riddled by bullets, his 11-year-old godson standing stunned, with a candy bar in his hand, as he came out of a gas station convenience store after walking away from his godfather’s Jaguar to get some sweets while Vernon put air in one of his tires.
While the boy was mercifully gone, Atlanta police say two suspects walked up and tried to rob Forrest of his wallet and possibly his car, which he’d bought with his own blood during a 16-year boxing career that saw him win world titles at 147 and 154 pounds. Perhaps he might have given up the money, but not the wallet and certainly not the car and so Vernon Forrest did one of the two things that came naturally to him. He fought back.
Forrest chased the men, pulling his own gun out at some point and firing at them. Witnesses say he gave up the chase, turned to walk back to his car when his assailants, assassins really, saw their chance. They opened fire and shot him in the back seven or eight times, police later saying they believed more than 20 shots were fired in all before it was over.
As they fled in a red Monte Carlo, the suspects had no idea they had left behind one of the kindest souls and sweetest men God ever made.