Skeptics point to the disappearance of Ray Lewis’ white suit as evidence of his involvement in two Atlanta homicides. The linebacker points to his clothes on the night in question as evidence of his innocence in the matter.
The former Super Bowl MVP indicates that his attire on January 31, 2000 proves that he looked for ladies to love rather dudes to fight on that fateful night.
“There I was, all dressed out in my mink coat, my fine suit,” Lewis writes in I Feel Like Going On, “Dude dresses like that, he’s not looking for a fight. How I was dressed, it made no sense with what went down, those shots being fired, all of that. Forget what kind of statement my clothes might have made. Forget that I might have been a little loud, over the top. Point is, when you’re dressed like that, you’re off to the sidelines, and here were these gangbangers stepping out to us from the shadows, looking to make trouble — but it was trouble we drove right past.”
Lewis and two companions escaped convictions in the Atlanta murders of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, two young men with prior convictions on minor offenses. The pair died in a wild 3:30 a.m. melee that witnessed one of Lewis’ associates clubbed in the head with a champagne bottle. Lewis, after his release from jail, captured the XXXV Super Bowl MVP award to put an exclamation point on a roller coaster or a year.
“I could not bring those two young men back,” Lewis contends. “I had no hand in their deaths.”
The ESPN analyst maintains in the book that he settled a civil suit with the decedents’ families out of charity rather than any debt owed. “It was not an admission of guilt — it was an expression of love, of sympathy,” the 17-year NFL veteran wrote. “I gave because I had it to give. I knew that money would never bring back what the families wanted most. But they asked for it so I gave.”
I Feel Like Going On currently ranks as the #1 book in Amazon.com’s “Christian Faith” category.