Friend's death leaves Jets' Kareem Brown with heavy heart Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/jets/2009/08/05/2009-08-05_friends_death_stuns_kareem_brown_.html#ixzz0NLATR8Nd

CORTLAND, N.Y. - On the second day of training camp, Kareem Brown went home to bury a friend.

He returned to Miami last Saturday to attend the funeral of Jeffrey Nelson Jr., who was killed on July 24 in a horrific one-car crash. They were childhood buddies, always together, and they were together when Nelson, 24, died right there in the median on University Drive in Miramar, Fla. He was a couple of blocks from home and a couple of months from the birth of his first child.

Brown, driving behind Nelson as they returned from a Miami nightclub around 3:30 a.m., witnessed the crash. The Jets' reserve tight end still seemed shaken Tuesday as he stood in the sunshine at SUNY-Cortland, haunted by images that aren't going to fade.

"It's something that's going to stick with me forever," Brown said.

He's one of the interesting stories in camp, a former defensive lineman who dropped 60 pounds from his college weight and is learning to play a new position. He's 6-4, 260, surprisingly nimble, with a decent chance of sticking as a tight end. But it's hard to concentrate on football. Not even the isolation of a remote training camp can take him away from July 24. He spends his idle moments thinking about his friend, texting Nelson's pregnant girlfriend, Tessie Fitzpatrick.

"He's going through a lot," Fitzpatrick said in a phone interview. "They did everything together. He was a good friend. Kareem is always checking up on me. He's awesome. He always texts me, 'Are you okay?' When I need to cry, he lets me let it out."

They console each other, both haunted by the mystery of what happened that night. Brown knows this much: His old high-school football and basketball teammate lost control of his car, drove up a median and into a tree. He was driving alone and was ejected from the crushed car, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

Brown doesn't believe his friend had been drinking. Neither does Fitzpatrick, who said, "That's out of the question." Results of the toxicology report won't be known for a few weeks.

"The way he hit that tree, the way his car was wrapped around that tree, I knew he was dead," Brown said. "No one could've survived that. I got out of my car and called his mom. I called his girlfriend....It just hurt. It hurt to witness. It hurt to be around something like that."

Brown reported to training camp last Thursday and met with the team psychologist, Sara Hickman. He practiced Friday and was excused for the funeral, returning to Cortland on Sunday.

"You try to think in a positive light," said Brown, who spent last season with the Jets after being waived by the Patriots in 2007. "I think, 'What would he want me to do?' He'd want me out here, busting my butt and getting the job done. I know he's watching over me."

And Brown is watching over Fitzpatrick, promising to be a father figure for her unborn daughter, Miy'arah Free Nelson, who is due Oct. 6. Brown's girlfriend also is expecting a daughter.

"He wants to take the responsibility for Jeffrey," she said. "He told me he wants our kids to grow up as sisters."
Brown was back on the field Sunday, trying to be a football player again. It would've been his friend's 25th birthday.



(nydailynews.com)