National Football League

Meriweather not a suspect in shooting

Published Aug. 13, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Florida police said Saturday they had ruled out New England Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather as a suspect in a near-fatal shooting, the Boston Herald reported.

Meriweather is "not considered a suspect" in an investigation into a Feb. 27 shooting in Apopka, near Orlando, an Orange County Sheriff's Department official told the Herald.

The investigation has now been "inactivated" unless further evidence becomes available and no charges will be filed, the official said.

Meriweather, 27, had been fingered by police about his involvement in the near-fatal shooting of his cousin and another man in February in Apopka, his hometown.

Despite claims from the shooting victims' attorney that Meriweather had fired the gun, he was never technically labeled a suspect.

And after months of cooperating with the police, authorities were able to rule him out entirely.

Police said Meriweather's cousin Quentin L. Taylor, 24, was shot through the head, apparently near his mouth, in the incident, while a bullet grazed the ear of Nico Glendale Stanley, 23.

Meriweather, an elite defensive back at the University of Miami, was selected in the first round of the 2007 draft by the Patriots.