Henry Ruggs III Deadly Car Crash
Las Vegas Raiders, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ruggs played for the Los Vegas Raiders, who are maintaining a reasonable record this season.
When a pro athlete gets in any sort of legal trouble, it can guarantee to make headlines in the news. These athletes are role models for many, friends and family of some. There are a lot of different perspectives that can be seen when a pro athlete gets in trouble.
According to ABC news, Las Vegas Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs was arrested for a DUI. During the accident, Ruggs killed a woman and her dog. This accident was viewed by most as his fault. Ruggs, the 22-year-old NFL player, had intoxication levels twice that of the legal amount. He was also driving at 156 miles per hour when he crashed into the woman’s car. It was ad day for just about everyone who is a sports fan, as it also puts a bad light on pro athletes. It makes you question weather he felt like he was invincible due to his money and his fame in the city.
The woman that he killed in the accident was a young woman. She was driving with her dog and was going under the speed limit. When the crash happened, the cars caught fire. Ruggs made it out with some minor injuries. The woman and dog could not make it out of the fire in time and died at the scene.
It is an awful event and was received very sadly by fans of the league around the world. But what does this say about professional athletes?
Pro athletes are paid very nicely in the NFL. They also receive a ton of attention from people. These people could be fans of their team or even just fans of the league in general. At times, this can make these athletes feel as if they are invincible. I think this was an example of that theory. I think that Ruggs was having a great time and felt like he was on top of the world. This led to him making a decision that he will forever regret and hopefully one day he can fully recover from.
How can we change this perspective that pro athletes have? I think it starts from within their organizations. I think the people in charge of the team and players need to do a better job. I think there needs to be programs and classes taught to the players on how to avoid situations like this one. There is currently a program in place that offers drivers to every player in the league for when they spend a night out drinking. Ruggs ignored that and made a life-altering decision. A decision that will be the reason that he likely never touches an NFL field again as a player. I hope that one day he is able to recover in full and learn from this decision. As for now, I think we all need to be more safe and smarter about decisions we make daily.
