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The Life of Sean Taylor

Sean Taylor was supposed to start at safety for the NFC in Sunday's Pro Bowl in Honolulu. The game should have announced Taylor's status as a player on the verge of becoming the best safety in the National Football League. Instead it will be a final football memorial for a life gone at 24.

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Eventually, Taylor was arrested for felony aggravated assault with a weapon and misdemeanor battery, spent several hours in jail and then was dragged through a protracted legal battle in which he faced prison time. The felony charges ultimately were dropped.

But in the aftermath of the incident, he was scared. Williams could see it as Taylor sat in his office. Once again, the coach yelled at Taylor, this time for 1 1/2 hours. Around the same time, Pedro Taylor had a similar conversation with Sean in one of their first father-son heart-to-heart talks.

"The young man was scared and it was the first time I witnessed it," Williams said. "He made significant life changes. It had nothing to do with football."

Those who know him best swear Taylor did not have a gun that day. They insist he didn't like guns and didn't want them around, that he was covering for a friend who soon became an ex-friend. The code he lived by said he would take the blame; he didn't care what people thought of him anyway. But the code also said the men who got him in trouble were cut from his life. He could not trust them anymore.

"I forgive but I don't forget," Clarke said he told her.

Williams said that after he screamed at Taylor that day in his office, the player finally relented. Not much. But pieces of the person inside began to peek out. In time, he started to smile at people around Redskins Park. He said hello to secretaries and coaches. London Fletcher, just arrived last season from the Buffalo Bills, cautiously kept his distance, having been warned by others in the league that Taylor would be difficult to approach. Instead, Taylor came to him, grinned and stuck out his hand. The wall of mistrust was giving way ever so little.

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In the end, the player for whom trust came so hard was in Miami on the night of Nov. 26 because he had come to have the one doctor he believed in most, John Uribe at the University of Miami, look at his knee. No matter what the Redskins' doctors said, Uribe was the one he listened to.

That night, after watching the Redskins lose to Tampa Bay and embarking on a 30-mile bicycle ride to push his return to the field, he went to sleep early in the Palmetto Bay home with both Jackies. He did not set a burglar alarm, nor would he spend the few hundred dollars for a security guard despite a recent robbery in the home. Instead it was Taylor alone with his girlfriend and daughter, a family he always wanted to have, when the intruders entered.

Clarke said that Jackie Garcia told her Sean braced himself against the door to keep the intruders from coming into the bedroom where they were sleeping. The robbers kicked in the door and were confronted by Taylor, who wielded a machete. One of them fired a gun, the bullet hitting Sean in the right leg, severing his femoral artery and lodging in his left thigh, and the player fell immediately. A couple of times he tried to push himself up, but he was fading fast.

Desperate and thinking the blood that gushed out was coming from Taylor's stomach, Jackie tried to stick towels there, missing the wound in his leg. Not that it would have mattered. By the time the paramedics arrived, nine minutes after the shooting, he essentially had bled to death.

Though Taylor was revived through blood transfusions and lived through the day, he quickly turned for the worse early the next morning. A little after 3:30 a.m. the doctor came down to the hospital waiting room and said, "We have tried everything and there is nothing more we can do."

At that moment, with her world suddenly crumbling, Clarke wanted to see her great-grandson, the one she called "the perfect child," one last time. Pedro Taylor gently tried to dissuade her, but she persisted.

There were no horrors that could have prepared her for the sight of Sean Taylor lying there in his room. The doctors said his body had rejected the blood they had given him and his organs simply shut down. His torso was wrapped with special blankets, but she could see it was bloated. His face was barely recognizable, his mouth misshapen from tubes.

Still, she kissed him on the forehead. Her final goodbye to the kind, mistrustful man who wanted so much to bring family together.

Staff writer Amy Shipley and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.