A MAN NAMED JOE

Joe McKnight walks through the tunnel onto FedExField on December 4, 2011. (Getty Images)

If reduced to a simple number, Joe McKnight became the 199th homicide victim last year in Jefferson and Orleans parishes, the two most populous parts of Greater New Orleans. Authorities called it a case of "road rage," an epidemic in a state with the highest per capita homicide rate in the country. Immediately, the story made national headlines because, simply, the implications were undeniable: an unarmed black man, killed by a white man; the dead man had played in the NFL, and his killer had been questioned at the scene then initially released with no charges.

Sheriff Newell Normand, a stocky man with blue eyes, shifted blame to Louisiana's "Stand Your Ground" laws during a press conference on December 2. "In this state, there are relative statutes that provide defenses to certain crimes," he said. He then added: "Everyone wants to make this about race. This isn't about race."

Over the next four days, Normand and his office interviewed, by his count, more than 160 people and 70 business owners from the bridge to the point of the shooting. But perhaps the key part of the investigation isn't the investigation itself. It's the moment when both McKnight and Gasser crossed a tiny sliver of a canal just 30 feet from where they eventually stopped at the corner of Behrman and Holmes. On one side of the canal is Orleans Parish, and on the other side Jefferson Parish—on one side blue, the other red.

"The demographics of the jury pool, the demographics of the power structure, the demographics of the population itself, in Jefferson versus Orleans, couldn't be more different," says Ramon Antonio Vargas, a journalist with the New Orleans Advocate, a local newspaper. The implication being if Gasser had been arrested in Orleans Parish, Tucker said, "He'd be under the jail."

"Everyone wants to make this about race. This isn't about race."

— SHERIFF NEWELL NORMAND

The shift between the two parishes began in the 1960s when white flight took hold of New Orleans, many moving to neighboring Jefferson Parish. Homogeneous enclaves gave rise to David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who served as a state representative out of Metairie, a Jefferson Parish community, and former Sheriff Harry Lee, a showman who found political capital in pandering to his constituents' fears. "If there are some young blacks driving a car late at night in a predominantly white neighborhood, they will be stopped," he once said.

When Lee died in 2007, his deputy, Normand, took over and maintained a tough approach, winning more than 90 percent of the vote in each of his election runs. But Morris Reed, president of the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP, says trust in the black community, which makes up a quarter of the parish, has been eroding after two black men were recently killed by deputies.

When Gasser wasn't immediately charged, a group protested in front of the sheriff's department. One person held up a sign that read, "A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY." At the crime scene, a makeshift memorial was erected, and someone left a handwritten letter surrounded by teddy bears that read, "Sheriff Normand is a racist."

Local journalists noted the similarities between McKnight's shooting and another killing in Jefferson Parish in 2013. After a dispute, Roger Batiste, a black man, shot and killed a white man from inside his car. Batiste evoked Stand Your Ground, an add-on to self-defense laws, drafted in part by the National Rifle Association, that allows for a person to simply "perceive" a threat in order to use deadly force—even if they could easily flee. Batiste, though, was still arrested at the scene and booked on second-degree murder. He later pleaded down to negligent homicide.

The problem with Stand Your Ground, Tucker says, is the law is "biased toward who is standing their ground."

On December 6, five days after McKnight's death, sheriff deputies announced Gasser had been arrested and booked on suspicion of manslaughter. The district attorney's office then had 60 days to formally charge or release him. Gasser was already known to local law enforcement for another road rage incident 10 years earlier at the same intersection where he shot McKnight. He had a dispute while driving, and when that driver, John Shilling, pulled over to the Shell station, Shilling said Gasser confronted him, spit on him and punched him. "I'm lucky," Shilling told New Orleans TV station WDSU. The charges were ultimately dismissed.

Jaiden McKnight, son of former NFL football player Joe McKnight, hugs his mother, Michelle Beltran, after McKnight's funeral service at the New Home Family Worship Center in New Orleans on December 12, 2016. Former USC and NFL player LenDale White (left) was a pallbearer. (AP Images)

Interviewed at his sister's house in December, Gasser's brother-in-law said Gasser has been mischaracterized and "everything will come out at the trial."

As the case passed to Jefferson Parish DA Paul Connick's office, the community's rage seemed to quell. Tucker, himself a former detective for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department under Harry Lee, met with the assistant district attorney for four hours on January 10 and left confident that charges, either manslaughter or murder two, would be filed in the coming days.

Gasser's attorneys have begun preparing a defense for what many in the public expect to be an explosive trial. "If there's neighbors across the street and we're yelling at each other, even if I start it, I don't think that is strong enough to say I caused this whole situation," Gerard Archer, one of the attorneys, says. "If the neighbor then comes in my home to attack me, I have the right to shoot him. Your vehicle is an extension of your home.

"These are two assholes acting like children."

Sheriff Normand seemed to echo those words in his second press conference on December 6, saying, "Two people engaged in bad behavior that day."

As so often happens, Tucker says, these subtle descriptions of events begin to blur the line between victim and perpetrator. "Dead men tell no stories," he says.

Later in Normand's profanity-laced press conference, he took questions from reporters. One woman stood up and asked if Normand understood "where the fear and angst by many in the community was coming from." She continued, saying "there's a black man shot and killed by a white man who is released."

Normand immediately pivoted and reiterated that this case wasn't about race. In that, he's only partially right. It's not just about race, or about Stand Your Ground, or Jefferson Parish, or road rage; it's about a man named Joe. And perhaps, the only question worth asking is this: Who is Joe McKnight?

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Joe McKnight dives into the end zone for a touchdown as the Texans' DeVier Posey and Troy Nolan trail during a game on October 8, 2012. (AP Images)

On a muggy August day, a storm approached the city. Joe was a junior at John Curtis Christian School, and his football coach, J.T. Curtis, gathered the team together the morning after their first game. "We all need to leave, but make sure you're back Monday for practice."

Joe headed to Shreveport with Tucker. They met when Joe was in the seventh grade and Tucker's son, a classmate of Joe's, brought him home from school one day. "Joe stuck out his chest and said his name, like 'I'm going to be somebody,'" Tucker said. Halfway to Shreveport, Hurricane Katrina hit land and the levees broke. It wasn't that Joe couldn’t go back home now. Joe had no home.

Raised in Kenner, near the New Orleans airport, in Jefferson Parish, Joe's father, a former professional boxer, left the family for good when Joe was a toddler. With three kids to provide for, his mother fell into debt and lost their apartment. For years Joe floated from family members to friends.

In Shreveport after Hurricane Katrina, he stayed in a hotel for nearly a month, before Coach Curtis sent word that the football team was getting back together for a partial season. Joe returned to New Orleans and saw a community decimated, and residents had few places to turn. "Friday night football became the only normal thing in people's lives," Curtis says.

Searching for something to cling to, the city's recovery soon became intertwined with Joe's success. Before the storm, he was a local star, but after, it was as if something inside him transformed—he became the best player in the state, then the country. "People didn't have air conditioning or lights, but they'd go watch Joe play," his friend and New Orleans native Jeremy Mott said. "He was our hero."

Joe's family had scattered after Katrina. His mother and brother lived with a cousin, and his sister was in Virginia for college, so he moved into Coach Curtis' house, which had become a sort of refuge for players with nowhere else to go. Joe was quiet, but he could also be charming and playful. When he spoke, he would look people in the eye, unflinchingly. Coach Curtis and his wife Lydia tried their best to shelter him, but he carried a burden few could understand.

Joe McKnight with his son Jaiden. (Courtesy of Michelle Beltran)

When he had free time he helped out at Tucker's mental health care facility. It was unforgiving work, but he took to it. When a special needs patient soiled himself, none of the trained clinicians helped, so Joe volunteered. "He bathed him, washed him up and fed him," Tucker says. "This is the No. 1 player in the country, and he didn't want any help."

During Joe's childhood his mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was hospitalized twice. He tried to be there for her, but their relationship was volatile. She was heavy-handed and demanded more than he could give, even on the field. From a young age, he had accepted that love is often conditional—from recruiters, from fans, even from your own mother. But still, he needed that love. So Joe ran faster. His statistics during his senior year seem almost impossible: more than 15 yards a carry, more than 30 yards a reception.

Against the No. 1 team in the country and the focus of popular MTV show Two-A-Days—Hoover High in Birmingham, Alabama—Joe had just eight touches from scrimmage but went for 204 yards. He was a magician. He'd take the ball and seemingly disappear at the line of scrimmage, then reappear yards downfield, gliding by defenders. When his team needed a play, it inserted him anywhere on the field. Late in the game with Hoover threatening, Joe, now on defense, jumped around a receiver to intercept a pass, sealing the win. He just took off his helmet and smiled.

"People didn't have air conditioning or lights, but they'd go watch Joe play. He was our hero."

— JEREMY MOTT, FRIEND OF McKNIGHT

Recruiters from all over the country attempted to woo Joe, but it came down to two choices: USC, which sold him on the idea of being the next Reggie Bush, and local powerhouse LSU, which promised him a hero’s welcome. "He was so afraid of making the wrong decision," his sister Johanna said.

With just a few weeks before national signing day, Joe was in the locker room after a late-season practice, joking with his teammates, when someone said a man was waiting outside to see him. Joe's smile evaporated.

Forty minutes later, Joe went outside, and it was like looking in a mirror, except the man in front of him had been ravaged by Parkinson's disease.

"Why are you here?" Joe asked his father. "You were never a part of my life. You don't need to be here now." There was no reconciliation. Joe Jr. and Joe Sr. turned and went their separate ways.

On February 7, 2007, students and locals packed the Curtis auditorium to watch their hero make his college decision in front of a national television audience. Joe paused for dramatic effect. To the shock of almost everyone in the building, he didn't choose LSU. He picked up the scarlet hat of USC, and there were audible gasps. A father and his young daughter began sobbing, and a group of fans stormed out. Within hours, he received death threats online, and 10 days later, the John Curtis school marching band was booed during Mardi Gras. But Joe had no choice. He had to run away. There was so much pain in that place.

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Joe McKnight celebrates a touchdown against Stanford during a game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on November 14, 2009. (Getty Images)

Joe arrived in Los Angeles with much fanfare. He was part of the "backfield of dreams" filled with prized recruits, but he was the jewel. When a Los Angeles Times reporter asked him if he was indeed the second coming of Reggie Bush, he said: "That's what they say. If you go off what other people say, it might destroy you."

He was reserved around campus, and his fashion was outdated. He wore Coogi sweaters, and his teammates called him "Yo." "Because his accent was so strong, he pronounced 'Joe' with a 'Y,'" teammate Stafon Johnson said.

Early on, he tried too hard to live up to the expectations. "He had struggles of relaxing," Johnson said. But he settled down, and at the Rose Bowl his freshman year, Joe McKnight was electric, gaining 206 all-purpose yards. After the game, then-USC head coach Pete Carroll said: "You have to be excited about Joe. This is what we thought he could become."

With his star in Hollywood rising, Joe found his muse. At a party after his freshman year, he met Michelle, a vibrant L.A. native. She was one of the few people on campus who didn't know his name, and he liked that. For his 20th birthday, she surprised him and invited most of the USC team to the Roosevelt Hotel for a party. He smiled throughout the night, then pulled her close and whispered, "I've never met anyone like you."

Within months, she was pregnant, and she worried what to tell Joe. "I'm not here to make your life any harder," she said. But Joe was ecstatic. When Jaiden was born, that's all he wanted to talk about. His college career, though, was stuttering. Injuries affected him, and he split time with three other backs. His fears would ooze out. "I gotta make it," he'd say to his girlfriend. When he finally had his opportunity his junior year, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards—the first USC player to do so in four years—but all fans saw was that he wasn't Reggie Bush.

Joe McKnight with his son Jaiden. (Courtesy of Michelle Beltran)

Before the Emerald Bowl his junior year, a Los Angeles Times reporter spotted him driving a Land Rover around campus, and it triggered an NCAA investigation. Carroll came into the locker room after practice and told Joe, "We'll get through this." Except they didn't. Joe was suspended for the Emerald Bowl and applied for the NFL draft. That was it. His USC career was over.

But Joe's talent was still undeniable. He ran a 4.47-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine, and there was talk he could creep into the second round. At Joe's draft party, at his great-grandmother's house in Kenner, his friends and old coaches piled tightly together on April 23, 2010, to watch the second and third rounds. But Joe's name was never called. After his friends left, he sulked back to a bedroom and went to sleep. The next day, when the Jets called to say they'd traded up to draft him in the fourth round, he was still sleeping.

It was an ominous start. He signed a four-year, $2.29 million deal and moved with Michelle and Jaiden to New Jersey. On the first day of training camp, the Jets handed him the only number available for his position, 25—Reggie Bush's number with the Saints. It was almost too cruel, and Joe scoffed. "I thought I was trying to leave something, but evidently, I'm still in the spotlight, and I'm in the shadow again," he told reporters.

At the time, the Jets were part of the new HBO show Hard Knocks, which followed the team through training camp. Unwittingly, Joe played the role of bumbling rookie. During his first practice, nervous and out of shape, he vomited during drills, then got down on all fours, as trainers applied wet towels to his neck. It was broadcast across the country.

After that practice, head coach Rex Ryan joked: "The thing that I appreciate about him is that he's trying to fight through it. Albeit on one knee."

Joe McKnight returns a kick against the New England Patriots at MetLife Stadium on November 22, 2012. (Getty Images)

Joe was embarrassed, but it didn't get much better. He fumbled in three straight preseason games, and opportunites his rookie year were rare. Ryan was never sure what to do with Joe's talent, so he threw him onto special teams as a returner. Suddenly, Joe's magic reappeared. He led the league in yards per kickoff return in 2011 and was selected to the All-Pro team.

Meanwhile his relationship with Michelle was deteriorating. He was anxious and struggling to sleep. He mostly stayed away from New Orleans and stopped calling his friends.

"He was like, 'I'm doing this for the people.' He wasn't playing for himself," his childhood friend Robby Green Jr. says. "That was the anxiety: 'Do they love me? Do I love myself?'"

A few months before the 2013 season, they broke up and Michelle returned to California for good. "I wanted to protect him, but I couldn't," she says. Joe spiraled. He was pulled over and arrested for unpaid parking tickets. He failed a conditioning test and got into Twitter beefs with fans. He missed the first three games of the preseason with a head injury. When a reporter asked him if he was worried about being cut, he said, "I'm OK." Then he was cut. And all the wounds he kept dressed and hidden burst open.

He returned to New Orleans and waited for another chance, but September became October, then November. It never came. He moved to his friend Mott's country home in Montz, 30 miles from the city, as if escaping the ghost of who he should have been.

One evening, he called Tucker and asked to meet for dinner. They'd had a falling out after he signed with the Jets. Joe had started to believe that Tucker was out to get something from him, and they left on bad terms. But now, sitting across from Tucker at Houston's on St. Charles Avenue, Joe was repentant. He ordered steak, medium-rare. After a couple of drinks, he looked Tucker in the eyes.

"I let everyone down," he told him. "I failed."

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Joe McKnight watches from the sideline during a game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on December 18, 2011. (Getty Images)

After a few months, Joe had begun to fight through his sadness by working out obsessively. Neighbors would sometimes spot him drenched in sweat pushing an ATV around the block; he was determined to get back to the NFL on his own terms.

He sat out the entire 2013 season and became an afterthought among league executives. Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Eric Bieniemy, however, remembered Joe's explosiveness from college and convinced head coach Andy Reid to take a chance on him. Wearing No. 22 in his second game, against the Dolphins, Joe caught two touchdown passes over the middle. On the second one, he high-stepped across the goal line. The Chiefs, it seemed, had finally figured out what to do with his talent.

As soon as he got to the locker room, he texted his friend Mott, "I'm back!"

Four days later, he tore his Achilles tendon.

For the next 18 months, Joe floated. He hung around Kansas City to rehab, then spent time in New Orleans and flew to L.A. to see his son. Looking for another shot, he called the Seahawks trying to reach Carroll, who was now their coach, but he never heard back. With all his NFL options expired, he went to the Canadadian Football League with the Edmonton Eskimos at the beginning of 2016. But he fumbled twice and was cut after two games.

Instead of going back to New Orleans, he booked a trip to L.A., back to USC. He walked in the guidance counselor's office and told them he wanted to get his degree. He was so confident, he pulled out a large sticky note and wrote, "I WILL GRADUATE." Then he signed it, adding his No. 22, and stuck it on the whiteboard.

He had heard about the NFL's Continuing Education Program that helps former players get their college degrees. However, his old NCAA investigation complicated matters. With only a few thousands dollars in his bank account, paying for school was out of the question. So he floated some more.

"It's like he was preparing for his own death. He made every day meaningful."

— ALANA MANEGO, McKNIGHT'S GIRLFRIEND

He crashed with a friend in Pasadena and spent as much time with his son as he could. Sometimes, he'd Uber to Burbank to pick Jaiden up and play catch for as long as Michelle would allow. After a few days, he got an unexpected call. His friend Green Jr. was in town and invited him to hang out with an acquaintance, 40 miles outside the city.

Joe arrived at a small condo, secluded from most of the world. They ate and drank. Maybe it was the solitude or the familiar company, but Joe opened up. He told them about his childhood. The uncertainty, the pressure, the abandonment. He started to have clarity. He needed to go home and make peace with his friends, and his mentors, but mostly with his mom.

Green bought him a ticket for New Orleans, but before he could use it, he got good news. Saskatchewan of the CFL needed a running back as soon as possible. He traveled to Regina and played the last three games of the season. There was no spotlight or shadow hanging over him. He averaged more than six yards a carry—he was still magic with the ball.

In early November he returned to New Orleans. His childhood friend Johnnie Thiel picked him up from the airport and noticed a change. "He was like a new Joe," Thiel says.

Joe called Tucker and started working at Choices, learning how to run a mental health clinic. He also had a new girlfriend, Alana Manego. She was training at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's academy. He'd pick her up, and they'd drive out of the city and look up at the sky. Joe had become fascinated by the stars. "It's like he was preparing for his own death. He made every day meaningful," she says.

On November 30, he finished work late and went upstairs to the top flight of the Choices building. Tucker was there with his son, looking through their telescope. Joe took a turn, gazing at the stars, then out across the city that had given and taken so much from him—Treme, the French Quarter; across the river, Algiers, then Jefferson Parish.

Reggie Bush wears special cleats in memory of former NFL player Joe McKnight prior to a game against the Oakland Raiders at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum on December 4, 2016. (Getty Images)

His whole life, he had been asking himself the same question: Who is Joe McKnight? Now, he had an answer.

He turned to face Tucker. "I'm at a different place in my life," he said. "I'm just Average Joe."

He drove to Mid-City, to the apartment he was moving into the following evening. He dropped off boxes with his old jerseys packed away— 4, 25, 22; he'd no longer be just a number. Then he drove to his mother's house.

During all the years he was gone, she'd finished her degree and gotten a steady job. She had her own place, and when she got home that night, Joe was curled up on the couch like a child. For so long, he had wanted to tell her how he felt, that he no longer blamed her. He knew she had been fighting just as hard as he had. But finding the right words was always difficult. Tomorrow.

The next morning, the sun is out. He puts on his blue Choices shirt, he goes to work, fires up the grill for lunch, then stands in the hallway as Tucker's keys float through the air in a soft arc, rising then falling. He fumbles them onto the ground. Tucker jokes about it. He walks to the front door, turns and smiles.

"I'll see you in a minute."

Correction: This story has been updated to note that it was Johnnie Thiel who called McKnight's family: "He searched for recent calls and dialed Tucker, then McKnight's friend, Johnnie Thiel, who in turn called Joe's family."