“It’s Traumatizing”: NFL Veteran Narrates Witnessing Death to Shaquille O’Neal While Sympathizing with Damar Hamlin

After starting the week off with an unfortunate injury to Damar Hamlin. The NFL was taken by shock following Hamlin’s horrific collapse on MNF. For days, the fans from all across the league came together to pray for the speedy recovery of the player. While those days now seem to be worth it, as the 24-year-old is showing extremely positive signs of improvement. Again, it is hard to imagine if it had gone the other way. An NFL Veteran, for whom things were perhaps a little tougher, has revealed the devastation that such an incident can cause.

Former Chicago Bears’ defensive tackle, Anthony ‘Spice’ Adams talked to NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal on his podcast ‘The Big Podcast‘. The NFL veteran has himself gone through a similar ordeal, while he was in the San Francisco 49ers. The player lost a teammate after a preseason game. Thomas Herrion, who was 23 at that time (2005) collapsed in the locker room. Although the player was taken to the hospital, he was later pronounced dead.

Spice Adams share a similar story to Damar Hamlin

The 42-year-old revealed how it feels to witness something like that. It s*cks man because I mean it’s just, it was a routine tackle, it’s a tackle that you would do every day in practice,” added Adams. “You see your teammate laying down on the ground, and he’s not even moving like, he’s not doing anything to let you know that he’s ok, like that, it’s traumatizing.”

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They had just got off the field from doing a 2 minute drive and we scored a touchdown and he (Thomas Herrion) was walking off the field saying, ‘man I’m tired’. Spice Adams narrated that long day to Shaq. “We get to the locker room and then I see him falling to the ground having a seizure. So I’m thinking like maybe he, you know need some sugar or something like that they give him and then he’ll be ok, and they brought the defibrillator and everything in there and he just was not responsive, and so we saw Thomas Herrion die in the locker room.”

The coroner’s office clarified the cause of death for Herrion. The findings of the officials aligned with the beliefs of his family and friends, who did not think that drugs had any part to play in the incident. Herrion had heart disease, which was undetectable and fairly rare in a 23-year-old.

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