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Saturday, March 26, 2011

A UGA player's brush with the accused cop killer

As a Georgia football player, Mike Gilliard gets approached by a lot of strangers around Athens. There was one in particular he remembered, who he thinks approached him at the mall one day.

“He asked if we were Georgia football players, and that was it, nothing major,” said Gilliard, an inside linebacker who will be a junior this fall.

It was only this week that Gilliard made the connection: That man was Jamie Hood, the accused police killer who finally turned himself in Friday night after a three-day search.

Hood, 33, is accused of killing Athens-Clarke County police offer Elmer “Buddy” Christian on Tuesday, and also wounding another officer.

Gilliard remembered encountering Hood a few more times, but said he didn’t know him very well.

“Me and Washaun (Ealey) talked about it that the other day: We’ve seen him plenty of times out before,” Gilliard said. “Matter of fact, out, he’s never been a threat or anything. He says ‘what’s up’ to us, and basically that’s it.”

Gilliard and several teammates were watching like many others on Friday night as Hood turned himself in to police on live television.

“It’s real crazy just seeing someone that you’ve seen before, that you’ve shook hands with, he’s on TV for shooting a police officer,” Gilliard said. “That’s real crazy.”

That wasn’t the only Georgia football connection to the Hood man-hunt.

Former Georgia player Bryant Gantt reached out to Hood via Facebook and was instrumental in negotiating Hood’s surrender, according to WSB-TV. Gantt, who lettered at Georgia from 1989-90, told the station he knew Hood in passing.

9 comments:

whoneedssportsanyway? said...

OMG! Have you ever thought about writing for US Weekly? 'Cuz this is, like, sooo good!

A-Phiz said...

Surprised it's not the headline on AJC " UGA players associated with cop killer"

Anonymous said...

Ok, wait a minute Seth... this is a story, but the Crowell thing isn't? I stayed out of that discussion the other day... but come on man. This is a story? Really? I heard that Aaron Murray once met Eminem in a grocery store - can you write on that?

Anonymous said...

Don't sweat it, Seth. Any news is fit to print this time of year. People want to start making demands on what you cover, they need to start paying up for your content.

At least you're not phoning it in like C.Low.

Adam said...

Seriously folks, get a grip. Nice work, Seth. Havent seen this elsewhere.

The AP article about this guy said he and his dead brother operated in the criminal underground of Athens. I'm a bit concerned about the 'I've seen him around...shook his hand' (to paraphrase) admission from a UGA player. Hope it was at the grocery store and nothing more.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, you guys are really retarded. No, it's not a story-story, but that doesn't mean it's not worth writing something about. He didn't write 40 inches on it. It's a few paragraphs. It's a take-it-or-leave-it story. You read it and god, "Hmmm." And then move on. You probably spent nearly the same amount of time criticizing it as he spent writing. What an enormously pretentious response.

Anonymous said...

Ok people, do you not see the advertisements on this blog? Do you think that Seth writes this blog as a hobby? He's compensated for it. This isn't charity work that he's doing, and as such, it's fine to criticize him. This is the real world... understand that.

"enormously pretentious response"

That, by itself, is pretentious. Good work, buddy.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said>> Ok people, do you not see the advertisements on this blog? Do you think that Seth writes this blog as a hobby? He's compensated for it. This isn't charity work that he's doing, and as such, it's fine to criticize him. This is the real world... understand that.

And you ain't paying one cent to read this. How bout some of you refrain from reading this damn blog while you're on your periods!

Theseus said...

@anon 4:17,

Unless something has changed, Seth wrote a while ago that he is not compensated for this blog. I see the advertisements but you don't know where the money is going for sure, now do you.