Report: Ex-football player fatally shot

Published Jan. 15, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Former college football player Reginald Doucet Jr. was shot dead by Los Angeles police Friday after allegedly attacking them.

Doucet Jr., 25 — who played defensive back at El Camino College and Middle Tennessee State University — was naked and yelling in a Playa Vista street and was arguing with a cab driver before the confrontation with police occurred, the Los Angeles Times reported.

According to a Los Angeles Police Department statement, Doucet Jr. was "yelling and behaving" erratically when officers responded to a disturbance call just outside his condominium building.

The shooting occurred about 3:30 a.m. PST after he tried to run away from police on three occasions and then attacked two officers as they attempted to detain him in an apartment complex doorway, according to police.

"The suspect repeatedly punched both officers in the face and head and at one point tried to take one of the officer's guns," the LAPD statement said.

One of the officers, a male who had been in the department for 17 months, shot Doucet Jr. twice.

Doucet Jr., who also worked as a personal fitness trainer and part-time model, died at a hospital.

Both of the officers were treated at a hospital — one for face and ankle injuries and the other for jaw and head injuries.

Doucet Jr.'s neighbor and former agent, Chris Ellison, said he could make no sense of the incident.

Ellison said he had never seen Doucet Jr. drunk before and also questioned the need for police to shoot him.

"Maybe he was belligerent, I don't know, but I have never seen him drunk. Never. Violent? Never," Ellison said. "He was an outstanding young man who was trying to make a better life.

"What bothers me is that if he was naked, they knew for a fact that he didn't have any weapons on him. Were the police really getting whooped that bad that they needed to shoot him — twice? They can't pull out a billy club? They can't tase him? They have to shoot him? The more I think about it, the more it bothers me."