Keion Carpenter, an NFL safety from 1999 to 2005, died Thursday morning in Miami at age 39 according to The Baltimore Sun.
Carpenter, who played for the Bills and Falcons, was injured while on a family vacation in Miami. According to his cousin, Jamila Smith, he was running to the car with his son, slipped and hit his head. He fell into a coma and died 24 hours later.
“It was just a freak accident,” Smith said. “He was always healthy; he went to the doctor, ate well and worked out.”
Carpenter, who played high school football in the Baltimore area and then at Virginia Tech, had 14 career interceptions in the NFL. He intercepted Brett Favre twice in the Falcons’ 27-7 wild-card upset at Green Bay in 2002. The first came after the Falcons took a 7-0 lead on their first possession and the second came with the game decided in the fourth quarter.
In 2005, Carpenter founded The Carpenter House to aid low-income families. The Shutdown Academy, which provided football and cheerleading instruction along with academic help, was a wing of The Carpenter House. Former NFL player and Baltimore native Aaron Maybin partnered with Carpenter on that.
“It’s a really, really tough day and a terrible reality to come to grips with,” Maybin said of Carpenter’s death. “He was more than a partner, friend and collaborator — he was a brother in the truest sense of the word.”
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