Scott Pioli opens up about Jovan Belcher murder-suicide
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| Former Chiefs GM manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel witnessed Jovan Belcher's suicide. (US Presswire) |
Former Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli says he might never make sense of what he witnessed Dec. 1, when linebacker Jovan Belcher shot himself in front of Pioli and then-coach Romeo Crennel.
"The truth is I haven't made sense of it," Pioli said on The Dan Patrick Show, his first public comments about the incident. "I don't know if any one of us that were there will ever make sense of it. Here's the reality: Every human being, I don't care who you are, have these deep dark places and you don't know, even those you're most intimate with, there's something you don't know. Clearly, there was something with Jovan that none of us knew."
Pioli compared it to the Billy Joel song The Stranger, adding: “There are places that people have within their minds and souls that you just don't know, and you're never going to know. And it's just awful.”
An autopsy report released two weeks ago showed Belcher had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he shot girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, 22, nine times and then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide.
Police say Belcher, 25, killed Perkins in front of their baby daughter, Zoe. She's now the subject of a custody fight between relatives of Belcher and Perkins.
Pioli, who was fired in early January before the team hired Andy Reid as coach, said the awful scene he saw was “more complicated” than a suicide because of what Belcher did before.
“There's a lot I have to sort out and figure out, too. It was, it's one of those things, surreal doesn't even do it justice, the word surreal, to try to characterize it. It was unlike anything I've ever been through."
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Patrick asked Pioli if he thought about what he might have done to stop it.
“Of course, absolutely," Pioli replied. "If you're human, if you have a heart, a conscience, if you have a thoughtful mind, absolutely. There are a lot of gymnastics your mind goes through and second-guessing of a lot of things. That's stuff I'll figure out in time. When you sign an NFL contract to do a job or to do any job, you never think you're going to go through something like that. Tragedy ...
"Here's the thing, the way I've looked at it, Dan, I was not a victim that day. I saw something awful, but the reality is there are other victims out there. There's people out there, there's family members, someone lost their daughter, someone lost their son, there are people who lost a family member and unfortunately this is a microcosm of what's really going on in our world today. That's what I've been trying to process. Unfortunately, I witnessed something horrific. The reality is I'm not unique. This is happening all over our world, all over our country. That's the bigger picture you have to start looking at as you try to get closure to it.”
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