Evans Pays His Respects To a Long-Lost Friend

Demetric Evans was 12 years old in March 1992, spending a lazy Saturday with his best friend Edward Crittenden, playing basketball at a classmate's home in their Haynesville, La., neighborhood.

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The classmate said his father owned a gun and offered to show it to Evans and Crittenden. There was no one else home at the time.

"When we went in the house and he got the gun, I thought it was actually a BB gun," Evans said. But the classmate told Evans that it was no BB gun. It was a 9mm handgun. Evans said he immediately became unsettled.

"When he was like, 'No, it's a real gun,' I was like, 'Okay, guys, well I'm fixin' to go home,' " he said.

Evans had scurried only a few paces from the classmate's home when he heard the gun go off. None of the children had known it was loaded. Crittenden was killed, the incident later ruled an accidental homicide.

Evans, now a versatile defensive lineman with the Washington Redskins, commemorates his friend each time he steps on the field, wearing the jersey No. 92 to acknowledge what happened that year.

"Edward was a guy I used to play with everyday, someone my family enjoyed being around," Evans said. "When you grow up with someone and know their passion about sports you try to make the most of things, because he never had the opportunity to play in high school or college, and you try to do your best for him and you definitely think about people who are not as fortunate.

"Coming here was the chance of a lifetime for me, and he didn't even get a chance to finish middle school. When he was killed it affected the whole community, really, and it's something I'll never forget. It made me understand that life is short, and you have to be careful, because it's not always your mistake that will cost you."

Small Beginnings

Haynesville is a speck of a blue-collar town (population about 2,600), where no one grieves in anonymity. It's tucked 60 miles northeast of Shreveport, and is steeped in the twin staples of the rural South: "Sports and church, that's all we had," said Evans, who grew up idolizing his older cousin, Doug Evans, a former NFL defensive back and Super Bowl winner.

Demetric Evans, his brother Justin, 16, and sister Jessica, 21, were raised by their mother, Mary Evans, though he had some contact with his father. "We don't have the relationship that a father and son should," Evans said. She was a nurse, working almost exclusively the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, leaving Evans in charge overnight.

"To this day my mom never complained about having to work that schedule and not being able to be home with us," Evans said. "And she never had any trouble out of us as far as us disrespecting her, because we knew what was expected of us and we knew that's what it took for us to have the lights on, the heat on, the bills paid. That's one thing I always admired about my mom: She never made excuses."

Free time was spent playing basketball or tossing around a football, and the Saturday when Crittenden died was like most others until it suddenly turned deadly. Evans raced home after hearing the gunshot, the neighborhood rattled by the sounds of an ambulance siren, and explained what had occurred after family members confronted him about the situation.