This tragic story broke just a couple of hours ago. Jackson who was drafted in the fourth round in the NFL just three months earlier was driving with two of high school football teammates, Isaiah Hazel and Anthony Litton, Jr. who were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
[TW: minor description of the accident]Police say that another car with a drunk driver attempted to pass their car at a high rate of speed, causing a collision and sending the Dodge Charger with the three friends and being struck by multiple trees.
A snippet from ESPN talks a bit about Jackson’s pre-NFL career prospects:
Jackson became an instant favorite among Vikings fans after he described his long journey from high school to the NFL draft. Speaking to Minnesota reporters after the draft, he said he was a non-qualifier after graduating from Wise High School in Maryland in 2017. He spent time at three junior colleges while taking two seasons away from the game before landing at Alabama in 2021.
During that interim, he said, he worked in the deli at a Harris Teeter grocery store and at one point won an award for employee of the month. “I told my mom and one point in time, ‘I guess I’m about to be working at a grocery store,'” Jackson said. Later he gave serious thought to joining the NBA 2K league.
“When I ended up leaving my first junior college,” he said, “I was home for about six months, but I told my friends that I was still in school. I stayed at my house for six straight months and nobody knew. It was kind of eating away at me, and then I finally just eventually told my friends. That moment really told me, like, man, if I was embarrassed to even tell them, I might want to get out and try to do it again instead of sitting here and sulking.”
Sources: ABC News YT | ESPN
Only first heard of this young man and his friends’ names today and it’s just incredibly sad.
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