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Too much caffeine caused the death of a 16-year-old high school student from South Carolina who collapsed during class last month, according to the county coroner.

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

The teen consumed three caffeine-laced drinks -- a cafe latte, large Diet Mountain Dew and an energy drink -- in a two-hour period before collapsing in his classroom at Spring Hill High School on April 26, Watts said.

Among those at the news conference Monday was the teen's father, Sean Cripe.

"Like all parents, we worry about our kids as they grow up. We worry about their safety, their health, especially once they start driving. But it wasn't a car crash that took his life. Instead, it was an energy drink," Sean Cripe said of his son's death.

Watts said Davis had purchased the latte at McDonald's around 12:30 p.m. After that he consumed the Diet Mountain Dew and the energy drink.

Davis collapsed at the school in Chapin, near Columbia, just before 2:30 p.m. and according to Watts, was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m.

Davis' autopsy showed no undiagnosed heart conditions and that Davis was healthy and had no conditions that could have triggered by the caffeine intake. Also, no other drugs or alcohol were found in the teen's system, according to Watts.

"This was not an overdose. We lost Davis from a totally legal substance," Watts said. "Our purpose here today is to let people know, especially our young kids in school, that these drinks can be dangerous, and be very careful with how you use them, and how many you drink on a daily basis."

Sean Cripe said he hopes that if nothing else comes out of this, parents and kids will realize the dangers of caffeinated beverages.

"Parents, please talk to your kids about the dangers of these energy drinks," he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that adolescents, age 12 to 18, should not consume more than 100 milligrams of caffeine per day. An intake of caffeine greater than that has been associated with elevated blood pressure in adolescents, Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, nutrition specialist and vice chairwoman in the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis previously told CNN.

When it comes to energy drinks specifically, "children and adolescents are advised to avoid energy drinks. They can contain a significant amount of caffeine as well as other stimulants," she said.

A 201 4 study found an estimated 73% of children consume some kind of caffeine each day. While there is no designated standard for children, according to the US Food and Drug Administration adults can consume 400 milligrams of caffeine per day -- equivalent to four or five cups of coffee -- without experiencing side effects.

Caffeine is a stimulant that can improve alertness and mood. It can also be habit forming. Too much caffeine can cause mild symptoms such as shaky hands and an upset stomach. Severe symptoms can include high blood pressure, seizures and coma, according to the National Capital Poison Center.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard and Jen Christensen contributed to this report

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Teen dies from too much caffeine, coroner says

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

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Democratic representative Elijah Cummings says the republican house, would have already impeached Clinton for a fraction of what Trump does

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around.

To take a deep breath.

To pace the hallway.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what Alvin Gentry, his coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, had told the 6'6" rookie shooting guard just a few weeks earlier? Bryce, you need to be able to walk away. Wasn't that what Dave Rice, his coach at UNLV, had said on multiple occasions? Bryce, you have to calm down. Wasn't that what Brian Beard, his AAU coach with the Compton Magic, had made so clear? Control yourself, Bryce. Control your emotions.
Control yourself, Bryce.
Basketball coaches liked Bryce Dejean-Jones. Pretty much everyone liked Bryce Dejean-Jones, most of the time. What with his goofy laugh, what with his devotion to signing autographs, what with his cravings for Chipotle burritos and pineapple-topped pizza, what with his talent for chess and his obsession with Xbox.

"He was a really good kid," says Justin Hawkins, his teammate in high school and then at UNLV. "He was funny. He had sarcasm to him. If he trusted you, he could open up and really let himself go."

But there was also this thing -this Bruce Banner-morphs-into-the-Incredible Hulk kind of rage that, upon reaching its boiling point, sent people running. On the basketball court, it revealed itself when Dejean-Jones felt his teammates weren't hustling, or a play wasn't designed correctly, or his unit wasn't living up to its potential, or a practice felt disheveled.

He would stomp his feet and clench his fists and fire off expletives with a machine-gun intensity: "Why aren't you guys fucking doing this right?"

Off the basketball court, this rage showed itself when Bryce Dejean-Jones drank.

Oh, he didn't imbibe particularly often. But during his half-decade college basketball career-first at Southern Cal, then at UNLV, then a final season at Iowa State-Dejean-Jones was involved in a handful of altercations, unreported until now, some of which also involved alcohol. "He was a good guy," recalls a teammate who requested anonymity, "who should not have been drinking."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, Dejean-Jones-fueled by alcohol, as well as marijuana, according to the toxicology report submitted by the coroner-found himself in a hallway at the Camden Belmont apartment complex in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood in Dallas.

His girlfriend lived with their one-year-old daughter in unit No. 1445, and the 203-pound Dejean-Jones was overcome with rage that he'd been locked out. According to witness reports, he proceeded to kick and punch the metal front door, repeatedly and with such force that he broke through a pair of deadbolts. Once inside, he tried opening the bedroom door, only to find that it too was locked.

That's when Dejean-Jones decided, once again, to break through.

That's when the occupant, a 22-year-old teacher, removed his gun from a nearby dresser and aimed at the door.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex, in unit No. 1345.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment.

It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, that teacher had an opportunity to put the gun aside.

To take a deep breath.

To wait.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what he had learned as the son and younger brother of United States Marines? Yes, a gun can be used for self-defense, but know what you're doing. In college, he was a member of the school's pistol club, where the stated objective was to teach "basic handgun safety and marksmanship skills in a safe, friendly and convenient environment."
A safe, friendly and convenient environment.
Here, inside his bedroom, was as safe and friendly and convenient an environment as he knew. Although he had only relocated to Dallas from the Midwest 11 months earlier, the teacher was just starting to feel comfortable instructing the local high-schoolers only a few years younger than him.

No, the city wasn't home, but it was growing on him. He had friends. A quiet roommate who kept to himself. Restaurants and shops within walking distance. "I liked it there," he says. "I didn't have any complaints."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, the teacher-having fallen asleep after watching Cleveland beat Toronto in Game 6 of the NBA 's Eastern Conference Finals-found himself stirred awake from beneath the blue comforter of his queen-sized bed. There was a banging at the front door of his apartment, unit No. 1345 on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex. Not a banging, he says in an interview-louder: a smashing.

"I would describe them as cracking noises," the teacher who shot Dejean-Jones tells B/R Mag, which agreed not to identify the shooter because he had not been charged with a crime and to protect him from potential retribution for speaking publicly for the first time. "Vicious cracks. It sounded like there were multiple people and that they were breaking into my apartment."

At that moment, the teacher sat up and-mind racing-opened the top drawer of the black nightstand situated alongside his bed. He reached for his Springfield 1911, a semi-automatic handgun that had been a college graduation gift from his father. He never kept the gun loaded, so after gripping it with his hand, he picked up the magazine-also in the nightstand-and loaded it.

For a couple of seconds, everything went quiet. At least one person, he was certain, had entered the apartment. The teacher pointed his gun at his bedroom door, which-out of habit dating back to living in a college house with too many free-roaming occupants-he kept locked. He says he called out: Hello! Then, a second time: Hello! The declaration was meant to let an intruder know he'd entered an occupied house. "Hopefully he hears me and leaves," the teacher recalls.

That's when-WHOMP!

A shoulder or foot slammed into the door.

The teacher could not see who was on the other side, only that his door was now shattered at the base of the locking mechanism.

That's when he decided he had no other choice.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired again.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, not on the fourth floor, in unit No. 1445.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment. He was 23 years old.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was living the dream. Yes, that's a cliche. But one year ago, having just signed a three-year deal with the Pelicans, it was true. Here was a kid from Inglewood, California, raised by his mother, Fran, and stepfather, K.C. This was a kid who had aspired to reach the NBA from the time he was six or seven. This was a life built around the NBA, or else.

Most everyone knows someone like Bryce-the kid shooting hoops in the backyard until 1 in the morning; the kid with calloused fingers and battered Nikes; the kid pretending to be Kobe Bryant, counting aloud from the shot clock in his mind. Three...two...one-he makes it! Bryce makes it!

"You could hear him outside behind the house," K.C., sitting on a couch inside the family's Inglewood home, recalls with a forced grin. "He was both the star and his own announcer."

Bryce bowled competitively. Rode a skateboard. Read all the Harry Potter books. Dreamed of inventing a flying car. Maintained an A average at the nearby Calgary Christian School.

"We swam, we shot baskets, we played video games," says Richard Solomon, a childhood friend who now plays pro ball in France. "Bryce was your average kid who just really, really wanted to become a professional basketball player."

He played at two high schools and was forced to sit his junior season after transferring from View Park Preparatory to William Howard Taft Charter High. ("He was allowed to play on our JV team, which was a joke," says Derrick Taylor, Taft's varsity coach. "We're talking about games that ended up 78-20, 91-18. No one could handle him.")

His AAU time was limited to one season with the Compton Magic. His birth father, Walter Dejean, re-emerged when Bryce was in ninth grade-a complicated period of divergent adult voices telling him what was best.

But then there was the temper. Bryce had one, and he did not manage it well.

During his freshman year at Southern Cal, he engaged in multiple confrontations during practices and had to be kicked out of the gym on several occasions. One afternoon, he fractured teammate Garrett Jackson's nose after being led to believe the freshman forward had spiked his drink.

"He was a good kid," says Kevin O'Neill, the Trojans coach, "who made some bad mistakes."

Bryce moved on to UNLV the following year and remained there for three seasons. On the court, he could be dynamic. After sitting out the requisite redshirt year, he averaged 10.3 points and 2.3 assists in 2012-13. But, as O'Neill did at USC, UNLV coach Dave Rice found Dejean-Jones difficult to handle.

On the one hand, he loved his drive. "Off the charts," Rice says. "I don't think I've ever coached someone who wanted to win so badly." Yet Rice, too, had to boot Dejean-Jones from multiple practices-sometimes forcibly.

"He definitely had moods, and there were times you'd need help from assistants getting him off the floor," Rice says. "But I'm telling you, he didn't want to hurt people. He just wanted to win desperately."

Dejean-Jones' last campaign in Las Vegas was 2013-14, and after the Rebels' season-ending loss to San Diego State, he found himself in yet another heated standoff, this time with UNLV guard Jelan Kendrick.

Kendrick declined to comment about the incident, but according to a source close to the UNLV program, Kendrick threatened to "bust" Dejean-Jones "in the head"-which Bryce interpreted as a death threat. "It got to the point where Jelan was about to call his people and Bryce was about to call his," says Hawkins, Dejean-Jones' high school teammate who played at UNLV.

Rice made it clear Dejean-Jones was not welcome back for a fourth season, and after graduating from UNLV with a degree in sociology, he transferred to Iowa State for a final college run at the pros.

Dejean-Jones played well as a graduate student and enjoyed the peaceful isolation of Ames, Iowa. He averaged 10.5 points and lit up Arkansas for 27 points in a Cyclones win December 4, 2014.

Yet there's a long history of the naively unrealistic regenerative powers of new schools and new coaches and new teams believing all a person needs is change. Bryce was Bryce: Along with the passion and heart came the propensity for finding himself in bad situations. Were they always his fault? Absolutely not. But they continued to occur.

One week later, a noise complaint on Dejean-Jones' apartment led to an arrest for gathering where marijuana was used. The charges were quickly dropped, and Dejean-Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Fred Hoiberg, the head coach, still suspended him from the upcoming game against archrival Iowa.

"That was it for Bryce," says Matt Abdelmassih, an Iowa State assistant coach. "He was a great kid. A great, great kid. But he felt like our program left him hanging out to dry, and he was probably right. From that point on, things spiraled out of control."

Dejean-Jones arrived late to the next game, and Hoiberg permanently removed him from the starting lineup. "He still played hard and well," Abdelmassih says. "But-I'd say unfairly-his reputation was sealed. Three schools, a bunch of incidents. That's hard to escape.

"But here's the thing: Most of what got him in trouble was his drive to win. He loved basketball. I mean, you won't find a kid who loves basketball more than Bryce. And he expected perfection and dedication from everyone. When he didn't see it, he lost his cool. It's unfortunate, because his temper owned him sometimes. And, deep down, he's one of the best guys I ever coached."

People who knew Dejean-Jones well speak of his college time as lost opportunity. But he failed to see it that way. The outbursts, the anger, the frustration-it was never anything personal. He simply did not want to be a college basketball player and felt constrained and uncomfortable in the amateur surroundings.

"He wasn't made for college," says Tyrell Jamerson, a former UNLV point guard who worked as Bryce's private coach. "His game was all NBA, and he knew that all along. You don't have isolation in college, you're not breaking defenders down in college. It's system-oriented in the NCAA. He was always a pro waiting to go pro."

Because of all the incidents, and the reputation as a hothead, and the so-so statistical line (Bryce averaged 10.8 points and 2.3 assists in 117 total collegiate games), Dejean-Jones was bypassed in the 2015 NBA draft. He hired an agent but ignored his representative's encouragement to try to sign a lucrative contract in Europe or Australia. He was all about the NBA.

Two years ago, Dejean-Jones latched on with the Pelicans' summer-league team in Las Vegas, averaging 12.8 points over six games. Still, questions about his maturity lingered.

During one matchup against Brooklyn, he hit a three-pointer over Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the first-round selection out of Arizona, then was called for a technical foul for taunting. Seth Davis, calling the game for NBA TV, was apoplectic: "You weren't drafted because there are questions about your temperament...and then you act like a blockhead?!"

As the NBA season began, Dejean-Jones signed with the Boise Stampede of the NBA Development League and spent five miserable weeks hating every moment of it. If the intensity of Division I college basketball often disappointed him, how could he possibly handle the every-man-for-himself world of NBA Lite? Answer: Not well.

Dejean-Jones nearly came to blows with one D-League teammate during practice and another time engaged in a shouting match with Dean Cooper, the head coach. "But he was all about winning, and I loved that," Cooper says. "This is not an embellishment: Bryce would dive on the floor five, six, seven times per game. He had no regard for his body. There are guys who don't dive that often in a full season.

"So could he be difficult? Yes. Would I want him on my team? Every single time."

Dejean-Jones averaged 19.2 points in nine games with Boise, and while many of his teammates found his competitiveness insufferable, he could not have cared less. "It was his dream," his father says. "He was chasing it with everything he had."

That's why, when Dell Demps, general manager of the Pelicans, called with a 10-day contract offer on January 21, 2016, Dejean-Jones didn't know how to respond. Was he supposed to cry? Scream? Dance? Punch?

"He called me, real calm," says his mother, Fran Jones. "He said, 'I have to pack because I'm leaving in two hours.' I asked where he was going, and he told me. He was really pumped up. He wasn't crying, because we're not big criers. But his dream was always the NBA, and now he was an NBA player. That was amazing."

In the weeks that followed, Dejean-Jones behaved, well, perfectly. Gentry knew of his track record but saw none of the immaturity or temper. There were no fights, no punches, no complaints.

"I like it here," Dejean-Jones told the New Orleans Advocate in January. "I think the system suits me well, and I was given the chance to go out and play and make the most of it."

Unlike other NBA head coaches, who consider D-League refugees little more than sideline filler, Gentry wanted to see what the kid could do. So after coming in off the bench for his first three games, Dejean-Jones moved into the starting lineup. His first 10-day contract became a second 10-day contract, then the long-term deal.

"I really liked his game," Gentry says. "He was very tough, very athletic. He could guard different positions, and he was extremely hungry. When someone has that level of talent, but he doesn't see failing in the NBA as an option, you have something unique."

Dejean-Jones averaged 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds before his season ended with a fractured right wrist. Yet he was, at long last, an NBA player.

"I think he really grew with us," Gentry says. "The difficult phase had passed, and he attained his goal. I think he realized he needed to change his ways to stay in the league. He was smart enough to do that."

Bryce Dejean-Jones should never have gone to Dallas. A year later, it's the part that still gets people.

He didn't like to talk about her, but Dejean-Jones had what he considered to be an on-again, off-again girlfriend. Her name is Chrystal Graves. She was a native of Camden, Arkansas, whom he met while attending UNLV. Graves graduated cum laude from Southern Arkansas University in 2014, then took a job as an elementary school teacher. She was bright and pretty and energetic.

And, in the later months of 2014, she was also pregnant.

Dejean-Jones, who was busy trying to go pro, did not receive the news warmly. Though Graves declined to speak with B/R Mag, friends of Dejean-Jones say the two had a tempestuous relationship, marked by frequent arguments. "He complained about her a lot," a former Iowa State confidant says. "It wasn't a healthy pairing."

Yet having been raised largely without his biological father around, Bryce committed himself to being an involved dad to their daughter, who was born on May 28, 2015. That's why he decided to fly to Dallas, where Chrystal now worked as a teacher: to be with their daughter for her first birthday.

People familiar with Bryce and Chrystal's difficult relationship insist they discouraged the trip. Shabazz Muhammad, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward who trained under Jamerson with Dejean-Jones in the offseason, says he urged his friend to skip Dallas and take a trek with him to Las Vegas. "He worked so hard, I wanted him to come along, have fun, relax," Muhammad recalls. "But he wasn't changing his plans."

Jamerson, meanwhile, hated the idea of Dejean-James going to Dallas. "He'd never been there; he didn't know the city," Jamerson says. "I was worried, and I told him I'd fly his girlfriend and daughter out to California for him. He didn't want that, but I should have insisted. I really should have. It's my greatest regret."

Walter Dejean, Bryce's father, was with Jamerson. "Bryce and I fought about it," he says. "One day he said he wouldn't go, then he decided he would go. It didn't get heated, but I thought he should bring Chrystal and Ally to California-we would all be able to see the baby. But he wasn't changing his mind. He had to go to Texas."

Bryce Dejean-Jones flew from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth on the afternoon of May 24, 2016 and took an Uber to Chrystal's two-bedroom apartment in the upscale Camden Belmont.

On their fourth night together, the couple decided to go out on the town. According to Graves' statement to the Dallas Police Department, they found a last-minute babysitter via Craigslist, and at approximately 9 p.m. dropped their daughter off at a home at 2505 Peabody Ave. They proceeded to grab a bite at BuzzBrews, a 24-hour eatery, then drove in Graves' car to Bungalow Beach Club downtown. Chrystal and Bryce spent approximately three hours at the club, which featured a pool, DJ and bottle service.

According to Graves, she and Bryce spent time apart inside Bungalow Beach, and she was "not sure" if he used drugs or alcohol. Later, however, Dejean-Jones' blood-alcohol level was 0.188 (for his weight, anything over 0.08 is considered legally intoxicated), and he also tested positive for marijuana.

Bryce, Chrystal and Shaneka Kelly, Chrystal's friend, departed Bungalow Beach at approximately 2:30 a.m., and the ensuing 20-minute drive to retrieve the baby was not a pleasant one.

"Graves says that when they arrived at the babysitter's place," reads the police report, "she and the complainant were already arguing about the usual things like money, the living arrangements, etc."

Chrystal, who was driving, asked Bryce to go inside and pick up their daughter. Before he exited the car, however, she reminded him to grab the diaper bags and bottles. That set him off. As Chrystal placed their daughter in her car seat, she turned and saw Bryce walking away in a huff-down Peabody Avenue, then right onto Latimer Street.

She called his phone, but it had fallen out of his pocket and was resting on the passenger seat. She circled the block several times before giving up, leaving the Dallas novice to navigate the 4.7-mile walk back to her place alone.

Graves told police she returned to apartment No. 1445, where she put her daughter to bed and fell asleep on the couch.

The next hour remains a mystery to police, to Graves, to Dejean-Jones' family. But Bryce made it back to the Camden Belmont and, despite not having a key, was able to enter the building (on weekend nights, there's often a steady stream of residents coming and going).

Maybe he had run there. Maybe he hitchhiked. Maybe he was the world's fastest walker. "Maybe he got robbed," his stepfather wonders, "because the police told us there was no money in his wallet."

Whatever the case, Dejean-Jones could not have been in the best of moods as he entered the elevator, took it to the third floor (instead of the fourth), turned to the first unit on the left and began his assault on the door to apartment No. 1345.

One of the many strange details of the night was that, while the teacher's apartment was filled with tables and chairs and pictures and the like, Graves-who just moved in a week earlier-had yet to furnish.

"It makes no sense to me," says Walter, Bryce's father. "None. Even if he were a wild man kicking in the door. I mean, let's say that's true. Don't you think he'd immediately see the furniture and say, 'Shit, I'm in the wrong place' and walk out? I'm not saying anyone is lying.

But it doesn't fully compute.

"If the man living in that apartment felt so threatened that he had to shoot my son like a dead dog, at least tell me how it happened. Because I can't make any sense out of it."

Here-according to the man who shot Bryce Dejean-Jones, in an interview with B/R Mag-is how it happened:
After he slammed on my bedroom door, you could kind of see some light pouring in through the edges of the door. And my bedroom door was locked, yes, although it was never attempted to be opened by the handle, just slammed into or kicked. And at that point, I did feel very afraid. I did not know who, what or how many people were on the other side of the door or what their intentions were. But I did know their intentions were violent. Fearing for my life, I took two shots through the door. After I took those two shots, I immediately called 911, and in the course of that he stumbled out into the breezeway and then 911 called me. I, at that point, was afraid to leave my room. I was too scared to really do anything but just stand there and talk to the police. After a minute or two, I was able to look through one of the holes from the bullets in the door. At that point I saw blood in my apartment but nobody in the apartment. The front door was wide-open. Somebody broke in-you could tell. At that point, I left my apartment and came into the main area with my roommate. We didn't leave our apartment, we didn't do anything, we didn't chase after anybody. We stayed in the apartment, where we stood for the several minutes it took until the police came. During that time, I was on the phone with the operator. Pretty much just holding the firearm, waiting for the police.
The teacher says he never saw Dejean-Jones, whose body, now lifeless, was found out in the hall by police. He also says he knew it wasn't his roommate banging into his door because, well, that would make no sense. His roommate was a smallish man-and, besides, why would he break into his own apartment?

No charges were filed against the teacher. Under Texas law, a person is allowed to use deadly force to defend themselves in their home. It also says a person using force cannot provoke an attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time.

The teacher agreed to talk about the shooting publicly for the first time to B/R Mag because, he says, too much misinformation has been making the rounds on social media. There were rumors that Dejean-Jones was robbing the apartment; rumors that the teacher fired for no reason.

"I believe the family deserves to at least know what really happened," he says. "They deserve an opportunity to hear the story."

Despite the family's repeated requests, K.C. Jones says they have never received a copy of the police report and that his son's possessions have yet to be returned. In response to a request for comment for this story, a representative for the Dallas Police Department told B/R Mag the DPD would reach out to K.C. and Fran Jones to take care of the matter, and last week K.C. said he finally received a letter regarding property retrieval. But still, he wrote in a text to B/R Mag, "no report."

"I still can't figure out why."

The phone rang inside the Jones home at approximately 3:30 in the morning. A groggy K.C., still 90 percent asleep, answered.

"Is this the father of Bryce Dejean-Jones?"

It was Baylor Hospital in Dallas. A woman was on the other line. "Your son has been in an accident. He was shot."

By now Fran was awake, and K.C. put the call on speaker.

"OK, OK," Fran said. "Shot? So is he going to be OK?"

Silence.

Within the hour, Walter's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. Another of his biological sons, Khalil Muhammad, is an amateur boxer, and earlier that night he had suffered a brutal defeat in a bout outside of Los Angeles.

"He got ripped up," Walter says. "But all through warm-ups he kept saying he didn't feel right, something didn't feel right. He never looked like himself." Now Walter was standing inside the L.A. emergency room as his son was attended to. The phone kept buzzing; he kept ignoring it. Finally, he picked up.

It was Fran.

"What's up?" Walter said.

"Bryce," she said. "Bryce is dead."

Silence.

"No he isn't," Walter said. "What are you talking about?"

"He's dead," Fran said. "He's dead."

"What do you do when someone tells you your child is gone?" Walter says, a year later. "You cry."

Cemeteries are confounding places for many reasons, one of which is that they seek-and inevitably fail-to define complicated lives within a couple of words chiseled into a rock.

The body of Bryce Dejean-Jones was laid to rest in the Inglewood Park Cemetery, in a pine box beneath a small plot of grass on what the employees here identify, coldly, as spot 406D of the Siesta section.

His tombstone, purchased by his family, reads: BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FATHER. Below his name and dates of birth and death are another four words: FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS.

To the immediate left of Dejean-Jones' grave is the tombstone belonging to Bonnie Lee Beggs, who was born on February 12, 1956 and died 34 days later. Beggs was resting, unbuckled, atop her mother's lap in the front seat of the family car when a collision threw her out the window. She died of a head injury at Kaiser Hospital. That was 61 years ago.

When K.C. Jones hears the story of baby Bonnie, who never had the opportunity to live fully, he finds a small comfort.

Bryce, the family knows, was far from perfect. His temper was bad. His unwillingness to stick with one school was frustrating. He could be maddeningly stubborn, and Kennedy Jones, his younger brother who is now a sophomore in high school, says he took plenty of thumpings from Bryce. And yet, Bryce was compassionate. And giving. He would have done anything for his mother, and he wanted to start a foundation to help at-risk children.

What allows K.C. and Fran and Walter to smile through their pain, however briefly, is that their son-who died three months before his 24th birthday-was able to reach his singular aspiration. Sixteen years earlier, Bryce had told people he was destined for the NBA. And then he became a Pelican. "What are the odds?" Fran asks. "Think about that."

Many people surrender their dreams and settle for the comfort of meh. Others, like Bonnie Lee Beggs, never get the chance for either.

Yes, Bryce Dejean-Jones died in a violent, confusing manner at just 23 years old.

But he died a professional basketball player.

He died living the dream.

Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books. His latest, GUNSLINGER: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre, is is available here. He podcasts daily here.
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The Night That Cost Bryce Dejean-Jones His Life-and NBA Dream

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond. Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around. To take a deep breath. To pace the hallway. To gather himself.

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Pacific island has 38 million pieces of trash but no people.

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A tiny island has all the makings of a secluded paradise -- except for the 38 million pieces of trash.

Henderson Island, a UNESCO world heritage site in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, has a higher density of trash than any other spot on the planet, researchers concluded in a study published Tuesday.

"It's both beautiful and terrifying," lead author Jennifer Lavers, a research scientist at Australia's University of Tasmania, reacted. She said her team estimated more than 13,000 pieces of trash washed up every day on the island, which is about 6 miles long and 3 miles wide.

Photos showed toy soldiers, dominos, toothbrushes and hundreds of hardhats of every shape, size and color scattered on the sand. A crab took shelter in what looked like a cosmetics container.

How could it happen? Lavers said Henderson Island is at the edge of a vortex of ocean currents known as the South Pacific gyre, which tends to capture and hold floating trash.

Still, organizing a cleanup would be no easy task. The island is located about halfway between New Zealand and Chile. It's part of the Pitcairn Islands group, a British dependency, and so remote that Lavers said she missed her own wedding after the boat coming to collect the group was delayed. Luckily, she said, the guests were still in Tahiti, in French Polynesia, when she showed up three days late, and she still got married.
BEEKEEPER'S STOLEN HIVES RECOVERED IN 'STING' OPERATION
The report appears in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Lavers said she sometimes found herself getting mesmerized by the variety and colors of the plastic that litters the island before the tragedy of it would sink in again.

Lavers and six others stayed on the island for 3½ months in 2015 while conducting the study. They found the trash weighed an estimated 17.6 tons and that more than two-thirds of it was buried in shallow sediment on the beaches.

Lavers said she noticed green toy soldiers that looked identical to those her brother had as a child in the early 1980s, as well as red Monopoly motels.
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She said the most common items they found were cigarette lighters and toothbrushes. One of the strangest was a baby pacifier.

Lavers said she is so appalled by the amount of plastic in the oceans that she has taken to using a bamboo iPhone case and toothbrush.

"We need to drastically rethink our relationship with plastic," she said. "It's something that's designed to last forever, but is often only used for a few fleeting moments and then tossed away."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Pacific island has 38 million pieces of trash, but no people

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A tiny island has all the makings of a secluded paradise -- except for the 38 million pieces of trash. Henderson Island, a UNESCO world heritage site in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, has a higher density of trash than any other spot on the planet, researchers concluded in a study published Tuesday.

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teacher shot a nba player dead

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around.

To take a deep breath.

To pace the hallway.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what Alvin Gentry, his coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, had told the 6'6" rookie shooting guard just a few weeks earlier? Bryce, you need to be able to walk away. Wasn't that what Dave Rice, his coach at UNLV, had said on multiple occasions? Bryce, you have to calm down. Wasn't that what Brian Beard, his AAU coach with the Compton Magic, had made so clear? Control yourself, Bryce. Control your emotions.
Control yourself, Bryce.
Basketball coaches liked Bryce Dejean-Jones. Pretty much everyone liked Bryce Dejean-Jones, most of the time. What with his goofy laugh, what with his devotion to signing autographs, what with his cravings for Chipotle burritos and pineapple-topped pizza, what with his talent for chess and his obsession with Xbox.

"He was a really good kid," says Justin Hawkins, his teammate in high school and then at UNLV. "He was funny. He had sarcasm to him. If he trusted you, he could open up and really let himself go."

But there was also this thing -this Bruce Banner-morphs-into-the-Incredible Hulk kind of rage that, upon reaching its boiling point, sent people running. On the basketball court, it revealed itself when Dejean-Jones felt his teammates weren't hustling, or a play wasn't designed correctly, or his unit wasn't living up to its potential, or a practice felt disheveled.

He would stomp his feet and clench his fists and fire off expletives with a machine-gun intensity: "Why aren't you guys fucking doing this right?"

Off the basketball court, this rage showed itself when Bryce Dejean-Jones drank.

Oh, he didn't imbibe particularly often. But during his half-decade college basketball career-first at Southern Cal, then at UNLV, then a final season at Iowa State-Dejean-Jones was involved in a handful of altercations, unreported until now, some of which also involved alcohol. "He was a good guy," recalls a teammate who requested anonymity, "who should not have been drinking."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, Dejean-Jones-fueled by alcohol, as well as marijuana, according to the toxicology report submitted by the coroner-found himself in a hallway at the Camden Belmont apartment complex in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood in Dallas.

His girlfriend lived with their one-year-old daughter in unit No. 1445, and the 203-pound Dejean-Jones was overcome with rage that he'd been locked out. According to witness reports, he proceeded to kick and punch the metal front door, repeatedly and with such force that he broke through a pair of deadbolts. Once inside, he tried opening the bedroom door, only to find that it too was locked.

That's when Dejean-Jones decided, once again, to break through.

That's when the occupant, a 22-year-old teacher, removed his gun from a nearby dresser and aimed at the door.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex, in unit No. 1345.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment.

It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, that teacher had an opportunity to put the gun aside.

To take a deep breath.

To wait.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what he had learned as the son and younger brother of United States Marines? Yes, a gun can be used for self-defense, but know what you're doing. In college, he was a member of the school's pistol club, where the stated objective was to teach "basic handgun safety and marksmanship skills in a safe, friendly and convenient environment."
A safe, friendly and convenient environment.
Here, inside his bedroom, was as safe and friendly and convenient an environment as he knew. Although he had only relocated to Dallas from the Midwest 11 months earlier, the teacher was just starting to feel comfortable instructing the local high-schoolers only a few years younger than him.

No, the city wasn't home, but it was growing on him. He had friends. A quiet roommate who kept to himself. Restaurants and shops within walking distance. "I liked it there," he says. "I didn't have any complaints."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, the teacher-having fallen asleep after watching Cleveland beat Toronto in Game 6 of the NBA 's Eastern Conference Finals-found himself stirred awake from beneath the blue comforter of his queen-sized bed. There was a banging at the front door of his apartment, unit No. 1345 on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex. Not a banging, he says in an interview-louder: a smashing.

"I would describe them as cracking noises," the teacher who shot Dejean-Jones tells B/R Mag, which agreed not to identify the shooter because he had not been charged with a crime and to protect him from potential retribution for speaking publicly for the first time. "Vicious cracks. It sounded like there were multiple people and that they were breaking into my apartment."

At that moment, the teacher sat up and-mind racing-opened the top drawer of the black nightstand situated alongside his bed. He reached for his Springfield 1911, a semi-automatic handgun that had been a college graduation gift from his father. He never kept the gun loaded, so after gripping it with his hand, he picked up the magazine-also in the nightstand-and loaded it.

For a couple of seconds, everything went quiet. At least one person, he was certain, had entered the apartment. The teacher pointed his gun at his bedroom door, which-out of habit dating back to living in a college house with too many free-roaming occupants-he kept locked. He says he called out: Hello! Then, a second time: Hello! The declaration was meant to let an intruder know he'd entered an occupied house. "Hopefully he hears me and leaves," the teacher recalls.

That's when-WHOMP!

A shoulder or foot slammed into the door.

The teacher could not see who was on the other side, only that his door was now shattered at the base of the locking mechanism.

That's when he decided he had no other choice.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired again.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, not on the fourth floor, in unit No. 1445.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment. He was 23 years old.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was living the dream. Yes, that's a cliche. But one year ago, having just signed a three-year deal with the Pelicans, it was true. Here was a kid from Inglewood, California, raised by his mother, Fran, and stepfather, K.C. This was a kid who had aspired to reach the NBA from the time he was six or seven. This was a life built around the NBA, or else.

Most everyone knows someone like Bryce-the kid shooting hoops in the backyard until 1 in the morning; the kid with calloused fingers and battered Nikes; the kid pretending to be Kobe Bryant, counting aloud from the shot clock in his mind. Three...two...one-he makes it! Bryce makes it!

"You could hear him outside behind the house," K.C., sitting on a couch inside the family's Inglewood home, recalls with a forced grin. "He was both the star and his own announcer."

Bryce bowled competitively. Rode a skateboard. Read all the Harry Potter books. Dreamed of inventing a flying car. Maintained an A average at the nearby Calgary Christian School.

"We swam, we shot baskets, we played video games," says Richard Solomon, a childhood friend who now plays pro ball in France. "Bryce was your average kid who just really, really wanted to become a professional basketball player."

He played at two high schools and was forced to sit his junior season after transferring from View Park Preparatory to William Howard Taft Charter High. ("He was allowed to play on our JV team, which was a joke," says Derrick Taylor, Taft's varsity coach. "We're talking about games that ended up 78-20, 91-18. No one could handle him.")

His AAU time was limited to one season with the Compton Magic. His birth father, Walter Dejean, re-emerged when Bryce was in ninth grade-a complicated period of divergent adult voices telling him what was best.

But then there was the temper. Bryce had one, and he did not manage it well.

During his freshman year at Southern Cal, he engaged in multiple confrontations during practices and had to be kicked out of the gym on several occasions. One afternoon, he fractured teammate Garrett Jackson's nose after being led to believe the freshman forward had spiked his drink.

"He was a good kid," says Kevin O'Neill, the Trojans coach, "who made some bad mistakes."

Bryce moved on to UNLV the following year and remained there for three seasons. On the court, he could be dynamic. After sitting out the requisite redshirt year, he averaged 10.3 points and 2.3 assists in 2012-13. But, as O'Neill did at USC, UNLV coach Dave Rice found Dejean-Jones difficult to handle.

On the one hand, he loved his drive. "Off the charts," Rice says. "I don't think I've ever coached someone who wanted to win so badly." Yet Rice, too, had to boot Dejean-Jones from multiple practices-sometimes forcibly.

"He definitely had moods, and there were times you'd need help from assistants getting him off the floor," Rice says. "But I'm telling you, he didn't want to hurt people. He just wanted to win desperately."

Dejean-Jones' last campaign in Las Vegas was 2013-14, and after the Rebels' season-ending loss to San Diego State, he found himself in yet another heated standoff, this time with UNLV guard Jelan Kendrick.

Kendrick declined to comment about the incident, but according to a source close to the UNLV program, Kendrick threatened to "bust" Dejean-Jones "in the head"-which Bryce interpreted as a death threat. "It got to the point where Jelan was about to call his people and Bryce was about to call his," says Hawkins, Dejean-Jones' high school teammate who played at UNLV.

Rice made it clear Dejean-Jones was not welcome back for a fourth season, and after graduating from UNLV with a degree in sociology, he transferred to Iowa State for a final college run at the pros.

Dejean-Jones played well as a graduate student and enjoyed the peaceful isolation of Ames, Iowa. He averaged 10.5 points and lit up Arkansas for 27 points in a Cyclones win December 4, 2014.

Yet there's a long history of the naively unrealistic regenerative powers of new schools and new coaches and new teams believing all a person needs is change. Bryce was Bryce: Along with the passion and heart came the propensity for finding himself in bad situations. Were they always his fault? Absolutely not. But they continued to occur.

One week later, a noise complaint on Dejean-Jones' apartment led to an arrest for gathering where marijuana was used. The charges were quickly dropped, and Dejean-Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Fred Hoiberg, the head coach, still suspended him from the upcoming game against archrival Iowa.

"That was it for Bryce," says Matt Abdelmassih, an Iowa State assistant coach. "He was a great kid. A great, great kid. But he felt like our program left him hanging out to dry, and he was probably right. From that point on, things spiraled out of control."

Dejean-Jones arrived late to the next game, and Hoiberg permanently removed him from the starting lineup. "He still played hard and well," Abdelmassih says. "But-I'd say unfairly-his reputation was sealed. Three schools, a bunch of incidents. That's hard to escape.

"But here's the thing: Most of what got him in trouble was his drive to win. He loved basketball. I mean, you won't find a kid who loves basketball more than Bryce. And he expected perfection and dedication from everyone. When he didn't see it, he lost his cool. It's unfortunate, because his temper owned him sometimes. And, deep down, he's one of the best guys I ever coached."

People who knew Dejean-Jones well speak of his college time as lost opportunity. But he failed to see it that way. The outbursts, the anger, the frustration-it was never anything personal. He simply did not want to be a college basketball player and felt constrained and uncomfortable in the amateur surroundings.

"He wasn't made for college," says Tyrell Jamerson, a former UNLV point guard who worked as Bryce's private coach. "His game was all NBA, and he knew that all along. You don't have isolation in college, you're not breaking defenders down in college. It's system-oriented in the NCAA. He was always a pro waiting to go pro."

Because of all the incidents, and the reputation as a hothead, and the so-so statistical line (Bryce averaged 10.8 points and 2.3 assists in 117 total collegiate games), Dejean-Jones was bypassed in the 2015 NBA draft. He hired an agent but ignored his representative's encouragement to try to sign a lucrative contract in Europe or Australia. He was all about the NBA.

Two years ago, Dejean-Jones latched on with the Pelicans' summer-league team in Las Vegas, averaging 12.8 points over six games. Still, questions about his maturity lingered.

During one matchup against Brooklyn, he hit a three-pointer over Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the first-round selection out of Arizona, then was called for a technical foul for taunting. Seth Davis, calling the game for NBA TV, was apoplectic: "You weren't drafted because there are questions about your temperament...and then you act like a blockhead?!"

As the NBA season began, Dejean-Jones signed with the Boise Stampede of the NBA Development League and spent five miserable weeks hating every moment of it. If the intensity of Division I college basketball often disappointed him, how could he possibly handle the every-man-for-himself world of NBA Lite? Answer: Not well.

Dejean-Jones nearly came to blows with one D-League teammate during practice and another time engaged in a shouting match with Dean Cooper, the head coach. "But he was all about winning, and I loved that," Cooper says. "This is not an embellishment: Bryce would dive on the floor five, six, seven times per game. He had no regard for his body. There are guys who don't dive that often in a full season.

"So could he be difficult? Yes. Would I want him on my team? Every single time."

Dejean-Jones averaged 19.2 points in nine games with Boise, and while many of his teammates found his competitiveness insufferable, he could not have cared less. "It was his dream," his father says. "He was chasing it with everything he had."

That's why, when Dell Demps, general manager of the Pelicans, called with a 10-day contract offer on January 21, 2016, Dejean-Jones didn't know how to respond. Was he supposed to cry? Scream? Dance? Punch?

"He called me, real calm," says his mother, Fran Jones. "He said, 'I have to pack because I'm leaving in two hours.' I asked where he was going, and he told me. He was really pumped up. He wasn't crying, because we're not big criers. But his dream was always the NBA, and now he was an NBA player. That was amazing."

In the weeks that followed, Dejean-Jones behaved, well, perfectly. Gentry knew of his track record but saw none of the immaturity or temper. There were no fights, no punches, no complaints.

"I like it here," Dejean-Jones told the New Orleans Advocate in January. "I think the system suits me well, and I was given the chance to go out and play and make the most of it."

Unlike other NBA head coaches, who consider D-League refugees little more than sideline filler, Gentry wanted to see what the kid could do. So after coming in off the bench for his first three games, Dejean-Jones moved into the starting lineup. His first 10-day contract became a second 10-day contract, then the long-term deal.

"I really liked his game," Gentry says. "He was very tough, very athletic. He could guard different positions, and he was extremely hungry. When someone has that level of talent, but he doesn't see failing in the NBA as an option, you have something unique."

Dejean-Jones averaged 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds before his season ended with a fractured right wrist. Yet he was, at long last, an NBA player.

"I think he really grew with us," Gentry says. "The difficult phase had passed, and he attained his goal. I think he realized he needed to change his ways to stay in the league. He was smart enough to do that."

Bryce Dejean-Jones should never have gone to Dallas. A year later, it's the part that still gets people.

He didn't like to talk about her, but Dejean-Jones had what he considered to be an on-again, off-again girlfriend. Her name is Chrystal Graves. She was a native of Camden, Arkansas, whom he met while attending UNLV. Graves graduated cum laude from Southern Arkansas University in 2014, then took a job as an elementary school teacher. She was bright and pretty and energetic.

And, in the later months of 2014, she was also pregnant.

Dejean-Jones, who was busy trying to go pro, did not receive the news warmly. Though Graves declined to speak with B/R Mag, friends of Dejean-Jones say the two had a tempestuous relationship, marked by frequent arguments. "He complained about her a lot," a former Iowa State confidant says. "It wasn't a healthy pairing."

Yet having been raised largely without his biological father around, Bryce committed himself to being an involved dad to their daughter, who was born on May 28, 2015. That's why he decided to fly to Dallas, where Chrystal now worked as a teacher: to be with their daughter for her first birthday.

People familiar with Bryce and Chrystal's difficult relationship insist they discouraged the trip. Shabazz Muhammad, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward who trained under Jamerson with Dejean-Jones in the offseason, says he urged his friend to skip Dallas and take a trek with him to Las Vegas. "He worked so hard, I wanted him to come along, have fun, relax," Muhammad recalls. "But he wasn't changing his plans."

Jamerson, meanwhile, hated the idea of Dejean-James going to Dallas. "He'd never been there; he didn't know the city," Jamerson says. "I was worried, and I told him I'd fly his girlfriend and daughter out to California for him. He didn't want that, but I should have insisted. I really should have. It's my greatest regret."

Walter Dejean, Bryce's father, was with Jamerson. "Bryce and I fought about it," he says. "One day he said he wouldn't go, then he decided he would go. It didn't get heated, but I thought he should bring Chrystal and Ally to California-we would all be able to see the baby. But he wasn't changing his mind. He had to go to Texas."

Bryce Dejean-Jones flew from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth on the afternoon of May 24, 2016 and took an Uber to Chrystal's two-bedroom apartment in the upscale Camden Belmont.

On their fourth night together, the couple decided to go out on the town. According to Graves' statement to the Dallas Police Department, they found a last-minute babysitter via Craigslist, and at approximately 9 p.m. dropped their daughter off at a home at 2505 Peabody Ave. They proceeded to grab a bite at BuzzBrews, a 24-hour eatery, then drove in Graves' car to Bungalow Beach Club downtown. Chrystal and Bryce spent approximately three hours at the club, which featured a pool, DJ and bottle service.

According to Graves, she and Bryce spent time apart inside Bungalow Beach, and she was "not sure" if he used drugs or alcohol. Later, however, Dejean-Jones' blood-alcohol level was 0.188 (for his weight, anything over 0.08 is considered legally intoxicated), and he also tested positive for marijuana.

Bryce, Chrystal and Shaneka Kelly, Chrystal's friend, departed Bungalow Beach at approximately 2:30 a.m., and the ensuing 20-minute drive to retrieve the baby was not a pleasant one.

"Graves says that when they arrived at the babysitter's place," reads the police report, "she and the complainant were already arguing about the usual things like money, the living arrangements, etc."

Chrystal, who was driving, asked Bryce to go inside and pick up their daughter. Before he exited the car, however, she reminded him to grab the diaper bags and bottles. That set him off. As Chrystal placed their daughter in her car seat, she turned and saw Bryce walking away in a huff-down Peabody Avenue, then right onto Latimer Street.

She called his phone, but it had fallen out of his pocket and was resting on the passenger seat. She circled the block several times before giving up, leaving the Dallas novice to navigate the 4.7-mile walk back to her place alone.

Graves told police she returned to apartment No. 1445, where she put her daughter to bed and fell asleep on the couch.

The next hour remains a mystery to police, to Graves, to Dejean-Jones' family. But Bryce made it back to the Camden Belmont and, despite not having a key, was able to enter the building (on weekend nights, there's often a steady stream of residents coming and going).

Maybe he had run there. Maybe he hitchhiked. Maybe he was the world's fastest walker. "Maybe he got robbed," his stepfather wonders, "because the police told us there was no money in his wallet."

Whatever the case, Dejean-Jones could not have been in the best of moods as he entered the elevator, took it to the third floor (instead of the fourth), turned to the first unit on the left and began his assault on the door to apartment No. 1345.

One of the many strange details of the night was that, while the teacher's apartment was filled with tables and chairs and pictures and the like, Graves-who just moved in a week earlier-had yet to furnish.

"It makes no sense to me," says Walter, Bryce's father. "None. Even if he were a wild man kicking in the door. I mean, let's say that's true. Don't you think he'd immediately see the furniture and say, 'Shit, I'm in the wrong place' and walk out? I'm not saying anyone is lying.

But it doesn't fully compute.

"If the man living in that apartment felt so threatened that he had to shoot my son like a dead dog, at least tell me how it happened. Because I can't make any sense out of it."

Here-according to the man who shot Bryce Dejean-Jones, in an interview with B/R Mag-is how it happened:
After he slammed on my bedroom door, you could kind of see some light pouring in through the edges of the door. And my bedroom door was locked, yes, although it was never attempted to be opened by the handle, just slammed into or kicked. And at that point, I did feel very afraid. I did not know who, what or how many people were on the other side of the door or what their intentions were. But I did know their intentions were violent. Fearing for my life, I took two shots through the door. After I took those two shots, I immediately called 911, and in the course of that he stumbled out into the breezeway and then 911 called me. I, at that point, was afraid to leave my room. I was too scared to really do anything but just stand there and talk to the police. After a minute or two, I was able to look through one of the holes from the bullets in the door. At that point I saw blood in my apartment but nobody in the apartment. The front door was wide-open. Somebody broke in-you could tell. At that point, I left my apartment and came into the main area with my roommate. We didn't leave our apartment, we didn't do anything, we didn't chase after anybody. We stayed in the apartment, where we stood for the several minutes it took until the police came. During that time, I was on the phone with the operator. Pretty much just holding the firearm, waiting for the police.
The teacher says he never saw Dejean-Jones, whose body, now lifeless, was found out in the hall by police. He also says he knew it wasn't his roommate banging into his door because, well, that would make no sense. His roommate was a smallish man-and, besides, why would he break into his own apartment?

No charges were filed against the teacher. Under Texas law, a person is allowed to use deadly force to defend themselves in their home. It also says a person using force cannot provoke an attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time.

The teacher agreed to talk about the shooting publicly for the first time to B/R Mag because, he says, too much misinformation has been making the rounds on social media. There were rumors that Dejean-Jones was robbing the apartment; rumors that the teacher fired for no reason.

"I believe the family deserves to at least know what really happened," he says. "They deserve an opportunity to hear the story."

Despite the family's repeated requests, K.C. Jones says they have never received a copy of the police report and that his son's possessions have yet to be returned. In response to a request for comment for this story, a representative for the Dallas Police Department told B/R Mag the DPD would reach out to K.C. and Fran Jones to take care of the matter, and last week K.C. said he finally received a letter regarding property retrieval. But still, he wrote in a text to B/R Mag, "no report."

"I still can't figure out why."

The phone rang inside the Jones home at approximately 3:30 in the morning. A groggy K.C., still 90 percent asleep, answered.

"Is this the father of Bryce Dejean-Jones?"

It was Baylor Hospital in Dallas. A woman was on the other line. "Your son has been in an accident. He was shot."

By now Fran was awake, and K.C. put the call on speaker.

"OK, OK," Fran said. "Shot? So is he going to be OK?"

Silence.

Within the hour, Walter's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. Another of his biological sons, Khalil Muhammad, is an amateur boxer, and earlier that night he had suffered a brutal defeat in a bout outside of Los Angeles.

"He got ripped up," Walter says. "But all through warm-ups he kept saying he didn't feel right, something didn't feel right. He never looked like himself." Now Walter was standing inside the L.A. emergency room as his son was attended to. The phone kept buzzing; he kept ignoring it. Finally, he picked up.

It was Fran.

"What's up?" Walter said.

"Bryce," she said. "Bryce is dead."

Silence.

"No he isn't," Walter said. "What are you talking about?"

"He's dead," Fran said. "He's dead."

"What do you do when someone tells you your child is gone?" Walter says, a year later. "You cry."

Cemeteries are confounding places for many reasons, one of which is that they seek-and inevitably fail-to define complicated lives within a couple of words chiseled into a rock.

The body of Bryce Dejean-Jones was laid to rest in the Inglewood Park Cemetery, in a pine box beneath a small plot of grass on what the employees here identify, coldly, as spot 406D of the Siesta section.

His tombstone, purchased by his family, reads: BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FATHER. Below his name and dates of birth and death are another four words: FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS.

To the immediate left of Dejean-Jones' grave is the tombstone belonging to Bonnie Lee Beggs, who was born on February 12, 1956 and died 34 days later. Beggs was resting, unbuckled, atop her mother's lap in the front seat of the family car when a collision threw her out the window. She died of a head injury at Kaiser Hospital. That was 61 years ago.

When K.C. Jones hears the story of baby Bonnie, who never had the opportunity to live fully, he finds a small comfort.

Bryce, the family knows, was far from perfect. His temper was bad. His unwillingness to stick with one school was frustrating. He could be maddeningly stubborn, and Kennedy Jones, his younger brother who is now a sophomore in high school, says he took plenty of thumpings from Bryce. And yet, Bryce was compassionate. And giving. He would have done anything for his mother, and he wanted to start a foundation to help at-risk children.

What allows K.C. and Fran and Walter to smile through their pain, however briefly, is that their son-who died three months before his 24th birthday-was able to reach his singular aspiration. Sixteen years earlier, Bryce had told people he was destined for the NBA. And then he became a Pelican. "What are the odds?" Fran asks. "Think about that."

Many people surrender their dreams and settle for the comfort of meh. Others, like Bonnie Lee Beggs, never get the chance for either.

Yes, Bryce Dejean-Jones died in a violent, confusing manner at just 23 years old.

But he died a professional basketball player.

He died living the dream.

Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books. His latest, GUNSLINGER: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre, is is available here. He podcasts daily here.
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The Night That Cost Bryce Dejean-Jones His Life-and NBA Dream

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond. Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around. To take a deep breath. To pace the hallway. To gather himself.

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Less than a week before US President Donald Trump arrives in Israel, the White House has been forced on to the defensive over reported comments by an American diplomat describing the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City -- one of Judaism's holiest sites -- as being in the West Bank.

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The Israeli Prime Minister's office said it was shocked by the comments and said it had asked the United States to explain what was meant by them.

According to Israel's Channel 2 News, a member of the US delegation preparing for Trump's visit made the comment about the wall when Israeli officials suggested a photographer shoot video of the President during a proposed visit to the site.

The Israeli officials were reportedly told that the President's visit to the site was private and that he did not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accompany him there; the American official reportedly added that Israel did not have jurisdiction over the area.

"Israel is convinced that this statement is contrary to the position of President [Donald] Trump, as expressed in his firm opposition to the most recent UN Security Council Resolution," the Israeli Prime Minister's Office said in a written statement Monday.

A White House spokesman later told CNN: "These comments were not authorized by the White House. They do not reflect the US position, and certainly not the President's position."

The US embassy in Israel told CNN it had no comment to make.

Israel assumed control over all of Jerusalem in 1967 following the Six-Day War. Palestinians and most of the international community regard all or part of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel began its occupation of the West Bank at the same time; the occupation is regarded as illegal by most countries, though Israel disputes that.

The spat came on the day the new US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman -- an orthodox Jew -- arrived in the country to take up his position.

Immediately after landing in Tel Aviv, Friedman traveled to Jerusalem and visited the Western Wall, praying for the health of his family and for the success of President Trump.

Friedman, who has long argued for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and previously called the two-state solution a "scam," presented his credentials to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday.

In prepared remarks, Friedman said the Ambassadorship was the greatest honor of his life and promised to "support the state of Israel in every way and in all ways." He made no reference to suggestions the US embassy might be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump has two weeks to make that decision, before the embassy automatically moves based on a 1995 US law mandating the location switch. Every President since then -- Republican and Democrat -- has waived the embassy move every six months, citing national security concerns.

CNN's Kevin Liptak and Elizabeth Roberts contributed to this report.

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israel 'shocked' over trump aide's western wall comment - cnn.com

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Israel: US must explain Western Wall comment

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The Israeli Prime Minister's office said it was shocked by the comments and said it had asked the United States to explain what was meant by them. According to Israel's Channel 2 News, a member of the US delegation preparing for Trump's visit made the comment about the wall when Israeli officials suggested a photographer shoot video of the President during a proposed visit to the site.

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Miss USA: Health care is a privilege.

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miss usa: health care is a privilege - cnn video

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Miss USA: Health care is a privilege - CNN Video

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Newly-crowned Miss USA Kara McCullough, who represented the District of Columbia, claimed health care is a privilege and not a right.

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teen dies from too much caffiene

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

The teen consumed three caffeine-laced drinks -- a cafe latte, large Diet Mountain Dew and an energy drink -- in a two-hour period before collapsing in his classroom at Spring Hill High School on April 26, Watts said.

Among those at the news conference Monday was the teen's father, Sean Cripe.

"Like all parents, we worry about our kids as they grow up. We worry about their safety, their health, especially once they start driving. But it wasn't a car crash that took his life. Instead, it was an energy drink," Sean Cripe said of his son's death.

Watts said Davis had purchased the latte at McDonald's around 12:30 p.m. After that he consumed the Diet Mountain Dew and the energy drink.

Davis collapsed at the school in Chapin, near Columbia, just before 2:30 p.m. and according to Watts, was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m.

Davis' autopsy showed no undiagnosed heart conditions and that Davis was healthy and had no conditions that could have triggered by the caffeine intake. Also, no other drugs or alcohol were found in the teen's system, according to Watts.

"This was not an overdose. We lost Davis from a totally legal substance," Watts said. "Our purpose here today is to let people know, especially our young kids in school, that these drinks can be dangerous, and be very careful with how you use them, and how many you drink on a daily basis."

Sean Cripe said he hopes that if nothing else comes out of this, parents and kids will realize the dangers of caffeinated beverages.

"Parents, please talk to your kids about the dangers of these energy drinks," he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that adolescents, age 12 to 18, should not consume more than 100 milligrams of caffeine per day. An intake of caffeine greater than that has been associated with elevated blood pressure in adolescents, Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, nutrition specialist and vice chairwoman in the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis previously told CNN.

When it comes to energy drinks specifically, "children and adolescents are advised to avoid energy drinks. They can contain a significant amount of caffeine as well as other stimulants," she said.

A 201 4 study found an estimated 73% of children consume some kind of caffeine each day. While there is no designated standard for children, according to the US Food and Drug Administration adults can consume 400 milligrams of caffeine per day -- equivalent to four or five cups of coffee -- without experiencing side effects.

Caffeine is a stimulant that can improve alertness and mood. It can also be habit forming. Too much caffeine can cause mild symptoms such as shaky hands and an upset stomach. Severe symptoms can include high blood pressure, seizures and coma, according to the National Capital Poison Center.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard and Jen Christensen contributed to this report

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Teen dies from too much caffeine, coroner says

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

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The night that cost Bryce Dejean-Jones his NBA dream and his life.

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around.

To take a deep breath.

To pace the hallway.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what Alvin Gentry, his coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, had told the 6'6" rookie shooting guard just a few weeks earlier? Bryce, you need to be able to walk away. Wasn't that what Dave Rice, his coach at UNLV, had said on multiple occasions? Bryce, you have to calm down. Wasn't that what Brian Beard, his AAU coach with the Compton Magic, had made so clear? Control yourself, Bryce. Control your emotions.
Control yourself, Bryce.
Basketball coaches liked Bryce Dejean-Jones. Pretty much everyone liked Bryce Dejean-Jones, most of the time. What with his goofy laugh, what with his devotion to signing autographs, what with his cravings for Chipotle burritos and pineapple-topped pizza, what with his talent for chess and his obsession with Xbox.

"He was a really good kid," says Justin Hawkins, his teammate in high school and then at UNLV. "He was funny. He had sarcasm to him. If he trusted you, he could open up and really let himself go."

But there was also this thing -this Bruce Banner-morphs-into-the-Incredible Hulk kind of rage that, upon reaching its boiling point, sent people running. On the basketball court, it revealed itself when Dejean-Jones felt his teammates weren't hustling, or a play wasn't designed correctly, or his unit wasn't living up to its potential, or a practice felt disheveled.

He would stomp his feet and clench his fists and fire off expletives with a machine-gun intensity: "Why aren't you guys fucking doing this right?"

Off the basketball court, this rage showed itself when Bryce Dejean-Jones drank.

Oh, he didn't imbibe particularly often. But during his half-decade college basketball career-first at Southern Cal, then at UNLV, then a final season at Iowa State-Dejean-Jones was involved in a handful of altercations, unreported until now, some of which also involved alcohol. "He was a good guy," recalls a teammate who requested anonymity, "who should not have been drinking."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, Dejean-Jones-fueled by alcohol, as well as marijuana, according to the toxicology report submitted by the coroner-found himself in a hallway at the Camden Belmont apartment complex in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood in Dallas.

His girlfriend lived with their one-year-old daughter in unit No. 1445, and the 203-pound Dejean-Jones was overcome with rage that he'd been locked out. According to witness reports, he proceeded to kick and punch the metal front door, repeatedly and with such force that he broke through a pair of deadbolts. Once inside, he tried opening the bedroom door, only to find that it too was locked.

That's when Dejean-Jones decided, once again, to break through.

That's when the occupant, a 22-year-old teacher, removed his gun from a nearby dresser and aimed at the door.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex, in unit No. 1345.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment.

It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, that teacher had an opportunity to put the gun aside.

To take a deep breath.

To wait.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what he had learned as the son and younger brother of United States Marines? Yes, a gun can be used for self-defense, but know what you're doing. In college, he was a member of the school's pistol club, where the stated objective was to teach "basic handgun safety and marksmanship skills in a safe, friendly and convenient environment."
A safe, friendly and convenient environment.
Here, inside his bedroom, was as safe and friendly and convenient an environment as he knew. Although he had only relocated to Dallas from the Midwest 11 months earlier, the teacher was just starting to feel comfortable instructing the local high-schoolers only a few years younger than him.

No, the city wasn't home, but it was growing on him. He had friends. A quiet roommate who kept to himself. Restaurants and shops within walking distance. "I liked it there," he says. "I didn't have any complaints."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, the teacher-having fallen asleep after watching Cleveland beat Toronto in Game 6 of the NBA 's Eastern Conference Finals-found himself stirred awake from beneath the blue comforter of his queen-sized bed. There was a banging at the front door of his apartment, unit No. 1345 on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex. Not a banging, he says in an interview-louder: a smashing.

"I would describe them as cracking noises," the teacher who shot Dejean-Jones tells B/R Mag, which agreed not to identify the shooter because he had not been charged with a crime and to protect him from potential retribution for speaking publicly for the first time. "Vicious cracks. It sounded like there were multiple people and that they were breaking into my apartment."

At that moment, the teacher sat up and-mind racing-opened the top drawer of the black nightstand situated alongside his bed. He reached for his Springfield 1911, a semi-automatic handgun that had been a college graduation gift from his father. He never kept the gun loaded, so after gripping it with his hand, he picked up the magazine-also in the nightstand-and loaded it.

For a couple of seconds, everything went quiet. At least one person, he was certain, had entered the apartment. The teacher pointed his gun at his bedroom door, which-out of habit dating back to living in a college house with too many free-roaming occupants-he kept locked. He says he called out: Hello! Then, a second time: Hello! The declaration was meant to let an intruder know he'd entered an occupied house. "Hopefully he hears me and leaves," the teacher recalls.

That's when-WHOMP!

A shoulder or foot slammed into the door.

The teacher could not see who was on the other side, only that his door was now shattered at the base of the locking mechanism.

That's when he decided he had no other choice.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired again.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, not on the fourth floor, in unit No. 1445.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment. He was 23 years old.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was living the dream. Yes, that's a cliche. But one year ago, having just signed a three-year deal with the Pelicans, it was true. Here was a kid from Inglewood, California, raised by his mother, Fran, and stepfather, K.C. This was a kid who had aspired to reach the NBA from the time he was six or seven. This was a life built around the NBA, or else.

Most everyone knows someone like Bryce-the kid shooting hoops in the backyard until 1 in the morning; the kid with calloused fingers and battered Nikes; the kid pretending to be Kobe Bryant, counting aloud from the shot clock in his mind. Three...two...one-he makes it! Bryce makes it!

"You could hear him outside behind the house," K.C., sitting on a couch inside the family's Inglewood home, recalls with a forced grin. "He was both the star and his own announcer."

Bryce bowled competitively. Rode a skateboard. Read all the Harry Potter books. Dreamed of inventing a flying car. Maintained an A average at the nearby Calgary Christian School.

"We swam, we shot baskets, we played video games," says Richard Solomon, a childhood friend who now plays pro ball in France. "Bryce was your average kid who just really, really wanted to become a professional basketball player."

He played at two high schools and was forced to sit his junior season after transferring from View Park Preparatory to William Howard Taft Charter High. ("He was allowed to play on our JV team, which was a joke," says Derrick Taylor, Taft's varsity coach. "We're talking about games that ended up 78-20, 91-18. No one could handle him.")

His AAU time was limited to one season with the Compton Magic. His birth father, Walter Dejean, re-emerged when Bryce was in ninth grade-a complicated period of divergent adult voices telling him what was best.

But then there was the temper. Bryce had one, and he did not manage it well.

During his freshman year at Southern Cal, he engaged in multiple confrontations during practices and had to be kicked out of the gym on several occasions. One afternoon, he fractured teammate Garrett Jackson's nose after being led to believe the freshman forward had spiked his drink.

"He was a good kid," says Kevin O'Neill, the Trojans coach, "who made some bad mistakes."

Bryce moved on to UNLV the following year and remained there for three seasons. On the court, he could be dynamic. After sitting out the requisite redshirt year, he averaged 10.3 points and 2.3 assists in 2012-13. But, as O'Neill did at USC, UNLV coach Dave Rice found Dejean-Jones difficult to handle.

On the one hand, he loved his drive. "Off the charts," Rice says. "I don't think I've ever coached someone who wanted to win so badly." Yet Rice, too, had to boot Dejean-Jones from multiple practices-sometimes forcibly.

"He definitely had moods, and there were times you'd need help from assistants getting him off the floor," Rice says. "But I'm telling you, he didn't want to hurt people. He just wanted to win desperately."

Dejean-Jones' last campaign in Las Vegas was 2013-14, and after the Rebels' season-ending loss to San Diego State, he found himself in yet another heated standoff, this time with UNLV guard Jelan Kendrick.

Kendrick declined to comment about the incident, but according to a source close to the UNLV program, Kendrick threatened to "bust" Dejean-Jones "in the head"-which Bryce interpreted as a death threat. "It got to the point where Jelan was about to call his people and Bryce was about to call his," says Hawkins, Dejean-Jones' high school teammate who played at UNLV.

Rice made it clear Dejean-Jones was not welcome back for a fourth season, and after graduating from UNLV with a degree in sociology, he transferred to Iowa State for a final college run at the pros.

Dejean-Jones played well as a graduate student and enjoyed the peaceful isolation of Ames, Iowa. He averaged 10.5 points and lit up Arkansas for 27 points in a Cyclones win December 4, 2014.

Yet there's a long history of the naively unrealistic regenerative powers of new schools and new coaches and new teams believing all a person needs is change. Bryce was Bryce: Along with the passion and heart came the propensity for finding himself in bad situations. Were they always his fault? Absolutely not. But they continued to occur.

One week later, a noise complaint on Dejean-Jones' apartment led to an arrest for gathering where marijuana was used. The charges were quickly dropped, and Dejean-Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Fred Hoiberg, the head coach, still suspended him from the upcoming game against archrival Iowa.

"That was it for Bryce," says Matt Abdelmassih, an Iowa State assistant coach. "He was a great kid. A great, great kid. But he felt like our program left him hanging out to dry, and he was probably right. From that point on, things spiraled out of control."

Dejean-Jones arrived late to the next game, and Hoiberg permanently removed him from the starting lineup. "He still played hard and well," Abdelmassih says. "But-I'd say unfairly-his reputation was sealed. Three schools, a bunch of incidents. That's hard to escape.

"But here's the thing: Most of what got him in trouble was his drive to win. He loved basketball. I mean, you won't find a kid who loves basketball more than Bryce. And he expected perfection and dedication from everyone. When he didn't see it, he lost his cool. It's unfortunate, because his temper owned him sometimes. And, deep down, he's one of the best guys I ever coached."

People who knew Dejean-Jones well speak of his college time as lost opportunity. But he failed to see it that way. The outbursts, the anger, the frustration-it was never anything personal. He simply did not want to be a college basketball player and felt constrained and uncomfortable in the amateur surroundings.

"He wasn't made for college," says Tyrell Jamerson, a former UNLV point guard who worked as Bryce's private coach. "His game was all NBA, and he knew that all along. You don't have isolation in college, you're not breaking defenders down in college. It's system-oriented in the NCAA. He was always a pro waiting to go pro."

Because of all the incidents, and the reputation as a hothead, and the so-so statistical line (Bryce averaged 10.8 points and 2.3 assists in 117 total collegiate games), Dejean-Jones was bypassed in the 2015 NBA draft. He hired an agent but ignored his representative's encouragement to try to sign a lucrative contract in Europe or Australia. He was all about the NBA.

Two years ago, Dejean-Jones latched on with the Pelicans' summer-league team in Las Vegas, averaging 12.8 points over six games. Still, questions about his maturity lingered.

During one matchup against Brooklyn, he hit a three-pointer over Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the first-round selection out of Arizona, then was called for a technical foul for taunting. Seth Davis, calling the game for NBA TV, was apoplectic: "You weren't drafted because there are questions about your temperament...and then you act like a blockhead?!"

As the NBA season began, Dejean-Jones signed with the Boise Stampede of the NBA Development League and spent five miserable weeks hating every moment of it. If the intensity of Division I college basketball often disappointed him, how could he possibly handle the every-man-for-himself world of NBA Lite? Answer: Not well.

Dejean-Jones nearly came to blows with one D-League teammate during practice and another time engaged in a shouting match with Dean Cooper, the head coach. "But he was all about winning, and I loved that," Cooper says. "This is not an embellishment: Bryce would dive on the floor five, six, seven times per game. He had no regard for his body. There are guys who don't dive that often in a full season.

"So could he be difficult? Yes. Would I want him on my team? Every single time."

Dejean-Jones averaged 19.2 points in nine games with Boise, and while many of his teammates found his competitiveness insufferable, he could not have cared less. "It was his dream," his father says. "He was chasing it with everything he had."

That's why, when Dell Demps, general manager of the Pelicans, called with a 10-day contract offer on January 21, 2016, Dejean-Jones didn't know how to respond. Was he supposed to cry? Scream? Dance? Punch?

"He called me, real calm," says his mother, Fran Jones. "He said, 'I have to pack because I'm leaving in two hours.' I asked where he was going, and he told me. He was really pumped up. He wasn't crying, because we're not big criers. But his dream was always the NBA, and now he was an NBA player. That was amazing."

In the weeks that followed, Dejean-Jones behaved, well, perfectly. Gentry knew of his track record but saw none of the immaturity or temper. There were no fights, no punches, no complaints.

"I like it here," Dejean-Jones told the New Orleans Advocate in January. "I think the system suits me well, and I was given the chance to go out and play and make the most of it."

Unlike other NBA head coaches, who consider D-League refugees little more than sideline filler, Gentry wanted to see what the kid could do. So after coming in off the bench for his first three games, Dejean-Jones moved into the starting lineup. His first 10-day contract became a second 10-day contract, then the long-term deal.

"I really liked his game," Gentry says. "He was very tough, very athletic. He could guard different positions, and he was extremely hungry. When someone has that level of talent, but he doesn't see failing in the NBA as an option, you have something unique."

Dejean-Jones averaged 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds before his season ended with a fractured right wrist. Yet he was, at long last, an NBA player.

"I think he really grew with us," Gentry says. "The difficult phase had passed, and he attained his goal. I think he realized he needed to change his ways to stay in the league. He was smart enough to do that."

Bryce Dejean-Jones should never have gone to Dallas. A year later, it's the part that still gets people.

He didn't like to talk about her, but Dejean-Jones had what he considered to be an on-again, off-again girlfriend. Her name is Chrystal Graves. She was a native of Camden, Arkansas, whom he met while attending UNLV. Graves graduated cum laude from Southern Arkansas University in 2014, then took a job as an elementary school teacher. She was bright and pretty and energetic.

And, in the later months of 2014, she was also pregnant.

Dejean-Jones, who was busy trying to go pro, did not receive the news warmly. Though Graves declined to speak with B/R Mag, friends of Dejean-Jones say the two had a tempestuous relationship, marked by frequent arguments. "He complained about her a lot," a former Iowa State confidant says. "It wasn't a healthy pairing."

Yet having been raised largely without his biological father around, Bryce committed himself to being an involved dad to their daughter, who was born on May 28, 2015. That's why he decided to fly to Dallas, where Chrystal now worked as a teacher: to be with their daughter for her first birthday.

People familiar with Bryce and Chrystal's difficult relationship insist they discouraged the trip. Shabazz Muhammad, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward who trained under Jamerson with Dejean-Jones in the offseason, says he urged his friend to skip Dallas and take a trek with him to Las Vegas. "He worked so hard, I wanted him to come along, have fun, relax," Muhammad recalls. "But he wasn't changing his plans."

Jamerson, meanwhile, hated the idea of Dejean-James going to Dallas. "He'd never been there; he didn't know the city," Jamerson says. "I was worried, and I told him I'd fly his girlfriend and daughter out to California for him. He didn't want that, but I should have insisted. I really should have. It's my greatest regret."

Walter Dejean, Bryce's father, was with Jamerson. "Bryce and I fought about it," he says. "One day he said he wouldn't go, then he decided he would go. It didn't get heated, but I thought he should bring Chrystal and Ally to California-we would all be able to see the baby. But he wasn't changing his mind. He had to go to Texas."

Bryce Dejean-Jones flew from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth on the afternoon of May 24, 2016 and took an Uber to Chrystal's two-bedroom apartment in the upscale Camden Belmont.

On their fourth night together, the couple decided to go out on the town. According to Graves' statement to the Dallas Police Department, they found a last-minute babysitter via Craigslist, and at approximately 9 p.m. dropped their daughter off at a home at 2505 Peabody Ave. They proceeded to grab a bite at BuzzBrews, a 24-hour eatery, then drove in Graves' car to Bungalow Beach Club downtown. Chrystal and Bryce spent approximately three hours at the club, which featured a pool, DJ and bottle service.

According to Graves, she and Bryce spent time apart inside Bungalow Beach, and she was "not sure" if he used drugs or alcohol. Later, however, Dejean-Jones' blood-alcohol level was 0.188 (for his weight, anything over 0.08 is considered legally intoxicated), and he also tested positive for marijuana.

Bryce, Chrystal and Shaneka Kelly, Chrystal's friend, departed Bungalow Beach at approximately 2:30 a.m., and the ensuing 20-minute drive to retrieve the baby was not a pleasant one.

"Graves says that when they arrived at the babysitter's place," reads the police report, "she and the complainant were already arguing about the usual things like money, the living arrangements, etc."

Chrystal, who was driving, asked Bryce to go inside and pick up their daughter. Before he exited the car, however, she reminded him to grab the diaper bags and bottles. That set him off. As Chrystal placed their daughter in her car seat, she turned and saw Bryce walking away in a huff-down Peabody Avenue, then right onto Latimer Street.

She called his phone, but it had fallen out of his pocket and was resting on the passenger seat. She circled the block several times before giving up, leaving the Dallas novice to navigate the 4.7-mile walk back to her place alone.

Graves told police she returned to apartment No. 1445, where she put her daughter to bed and fell asleep on the couch.

The next hour remains a mystery to police, to Graves, to Dejean-Jones' family. But Bryce made it back to the Camden Belmont and, despite not having a key, was able to enter the building (on weekend nights, there's often a steady stream of residents coming and going).

Maybe he had run there. Maybe he hitchhiked. Maybe he was the world's fastest walker. "Maybe he got robbed," his stepfather wonders, "because the police told us there was no money in his wallet."

Whatever the case, Dejean-Jones could not have been in the best of moods as he entered the elevator, took it to the third floor (instead of the fourth), turned to the first unit on the left and began his assault on the door to apartment No. 1345.

One of the many strange details of the night was that, while the teacher's apartment was filled with tables and chairs and pictures and the like, Graves-who just moved in a week earlier-had yet to furnish.

"It makes no sense to me," says Walter, Bryce's father. "None. Even if he were a wild man kicking in the door. I mean, let's say that's true. Don't you think he'd immediately see the furniture and say, 'Shit, I'm in the wrong place' and walk out? I'm not saying anyone is lying.

But it doesn't fully compute.

"If the man living in that apartment felt so threatened that he had to shoot my son like a dead dog, at least tell me how it happened. Because I can't make any sense out of it."

Here-according to the man who shot Bryce Dejean-Jones, in an interview with B/R Mag-is how it happened:
After he slammed on my bedroom door, you could kind of see some light pouring in through the edges of the door. And my bedroom door was locked, yes, although it was never attempted to be opened by the handle, just slammed into or kicked. And at that point, I did feel very afraid. I did not know who, what or how many people were on the other side of the door or what their intentions were. But I did know their intentions were violent. Fearing for my life, I took two shots through the door. After I took those two shots, I immediately called 911, and in the course of that he stumbled out into the breezeway and then 911 called me. I, at that point, was afraid to leave my room. I was too scared to really do anything but just stand there and talk to the police. After a minute or two, I was able to look through one of the holes from the bullets in the door. At that point I saw blood in my apartment but nobody in the apartment. The front door was wide-open. Somebody broke in-you could tell. At that point, I left my apartment and came into the main area with my roommate. We didn't leave our apartment, we didn't do anything, we didn't chase after anybody. We stayed in the apartment, where we stood for the several minutes it took until the police came. During that time, I was on the phone with the operator. Pretty much just holding the firearm, waiting for the police.
The teacher says he never saw Dejean-Jones, whose body, now lifeless, was found out in the hall by police. He also says he knew it wasn't his roommate banging into his door because, well, that would make no sense. His roommate was a smallish man-and, besides, why would he break into his own apartment?

No charges were filed against the teacher. Under Texas law, a person is allowed to use deadly force to defend themselves in their home. It also says a person using force cannot provoke an attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time.

The teacher agreed to talk about the shooting publicly for the first time to B/R Mag because, he says, too much misinformation has been making the rounds on social media. There were rumors that Dejean-Jones was robbing the apartment; rumors that the teacher fired for no reason.

"I believe the family deserves to at least know what really happened," he says. "They deserve an opportunity to hear the story."

Despite the family's repeated requests, K.C. Jones says they have never received a copy of the police report and that his son's possessions have yet to be returned. In response to a request for comment for this story, a representative for the Dallas Police Department told B/R Mag the DPD would reach out to K.C. and Fran Jones to take care of the matter, and last week K.C. said he finally received a letter regarding property retrieval. But still, he wrote in a text to B/R Mag, "no report."

"I still can't figure out why."

The phone rang inside the Jones home at approximately 3:30 in the morning. A groggy K.C., still 90 percent asleep, answered.

"Is this the father of Bryce Dejean-Jones?"

It was Baylor Hospital in Dallas. A woman was on the other line. "Your son has been in an accident. He was shot."

By now Fran was awake, and K.C. put the call on speaker.

"OK, OK," Fran said. "Shot? So is he going to be OK?"

Silence.

Within the hour, Walter's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. Another of his biological sons, Khalil Muhammad, is an amateur boxer, and earlier that night he had suffered a brutal defeat in a bout outside of Los Angeles.

"He got ripped up," Walter says. "But all through warm-ups he kept saying he didn't feel right, something didn't feel right. He never looked like himself." Now Walter was standing inside the L.A. emergency room as his son was attended to. The phone kept buzzing; he kept ignoring it. Finally, he picked up.

It was Fran.

"What's up?" Walter said.

"Bryce," she said. "Bryce is dead."

Silence.

"No he isn't," Walter said. "What are you talking about?"

"He's dead," Fran said. "He's dead."

"What do you do when someone tells you your child is gone?" Walter says, a year later. "You cry."

Cemeteries are confounding places for many reasons, one of which is that they seek-and inevitably fail-to define complicated lives within a couple of words chiseled into a rock.

The body of Bryce Dejean-Jones was laid to rest in the Inglewood Park Cemetery, in a pine box beneath a small plot of grass on what the employees here identify, coldly, as spot 406D of the Siesta section.

His tombstone, purchased by his family, reads: BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FATHER. Below his name and dates of birth and death are another four words: FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS.

To the immediate left of Dejean-Jones' grave is the tombstone belonging to Bonnie Lee Beggs, who was born on February 12, 1956 and died 34 days later. Beggs was resting, unbuckled, atop her mother's lap in the front seat of the family car when a collision threw her out the window. She died of a head injury at Kaiser Hospital. That was 61 years ago.

When K.C. Jones hears the story of baby Bonnie, who never had the opportunity to live fully, he finds a small comfort.

Bryce, the family knows, was far from perfect. His temper was bad. His unwillingness to stick with one school was frustrating. He could be maddeningly stubborn, and Kennedy Jones, his younger brother who is now a sophomore in high school, says he took plenty of thumpings from Bryce. And yet, Bryce was compassionate. And giving. He would have done anything for his mother, and he wanted to start a foundation to help at-risk children.

What allows K.C. and Fran and Walter to smile through their pain, however briefly, is that their son-who died three months before his 24th birthday-was able to reach his singular aspiration. Sixteen years earlier, Bryce had told people he was destined for the NBA. And then he became a Pelican. "What are the odds?" Fran asks. "Think about that."

Many people surrender their dreams and settle for the comfort of meh. Others, like Bonnie Lee Beggs, never get the chance for either.

Yes, Bryce Dejean-Jones died in a violent, confusing manner at just 23 years old.

But he died a professional basketball player.

He died living the dream.

Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books. His latest, GUNSLINGER: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre, is is available here. He podcasts daily here.
Click here to get B/R Mag on the go in the new B/R app for more sports storytelling worth your time, wherever you are.

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The Night That Cost Bryce Dejean-Jones His Life-and NBA Dream

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond. Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around. To take a deep breath. To pace the hallway. To gather himself.

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Davis Allen Cripe died from too much caffiene

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

The teen consumed three caffeine-laced drinks -- a cafe latte, large Diet Mountain Dew and an energy drink -- in a two-hour period before collapsing in his classroom at Spring Hill High School on April 26, Watts said.

Among those at the news conference Monday was the teen's father, Sean Cripe.

"Like all parents, we worry about our kids as they grow up. We worry about their safety, their health, especially once they start driving. But it wasn't a car crash that took his life. Instead, it was an energy drink," Sean Cripe said of his son's death.

Watts said Davis had purchased the latte at McDonald's around 12:30 p.m. After that he consumed the Diet Mountain Dew and the energy drink.

Davis collapsed at the school in Chapin, near Columbia, just before 2:30 p.m. and according to Watts, was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m.

Davis' autopsy showed no undiagnosed heart conditions and that Davis was healthy and had no conditions that could have triggered by the caffeine intake. Also, no other drugs or alcohol were found in the teen's system, according to Watts.

"This was not an overdose. We lost Davis from a totally legal substance," Watts said. "Our purpose here today is to let people know, especially our young kids in school, that these drinks can be dangerous, and be very careful with how you use them, and how many you drink on a daily basis."

Sean Cripe said he hopes that if nothing else comes out of this, parents and kids will realize the dangers of caffeinated beverages.

"Parents, please talk to your kids about the dangers of these energy drinks," he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that adolescents, age 12 to 18, should not consume more than 100 milligrams of caffeine per day. An intake of caffeine greater than that has been associated with elevated blood pressure in adolescents, Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, nutrition specialist and vice chairwoman in the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis previously told CNN.

When it comes to energy drinks specifically, "children and adolescents are advised to avoid energy drinks. They can contain a significant amount of caffeine as well as other stimulants," she said.

A 201 4 study found an estimated 73% of children consume some kind of caffeine each day. While there is no designated standard for children, according to the US Food and Drug Administration adults can consume 400 milligrams of caffeine per day -- equivalent to four or five cups of coffee -- without experiencing side effects.

Caffeine is a stimulant that can improve alertness and mood. It can also be habit forming. Too much caffeine can cause mild symptoms such as shaky hands and an upset stomach. Severe symptoms can include high blood pressure, seizures and coma, according to the National Capital Poison Center.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard and Jen Christensen contributed to this report

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Teen dies from too much caffeine, coroner says

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Davis Allen Cripe died from a caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia, Richland County Coroner Gary Watts announced in a news conference Monday. During an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects the brain, heart and other organs.

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Celtics moving on to conference finals and are going to play the Cavs

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Teen finishes 25K run wearing shoes of late father who died during race

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Jason Kinzler died of a heart attack just one mile from the finish line of the Fifth Third River Bank Run 25K in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on May 14, 2011.

Six years later, his 14-year-old son Jake finished the race for him -- while wearing his late father's shoes.

"When he passed away I told my mom... someday I want to finish the race in his shoes and I remember she told me she said, 'I kept the shoes because I knew you would say that someday,'" Jake told WXMI.

Sure enough, Jake's mother, Kristi Kinzler, was waiting for him by the 14 mile mark so he could trade his running shoes for his father's, the exact same pair the late Kinzler wore during the tragic race in 2011.

See photos from the race:

Naturally, crossing the finish line was an emotional experience for Jake and his whole family.

"I was thinking about him just running there next to me and what it was like for him running in these shoes, and what it would have been like if he would have been able to continue," he told WZZM.

Hannah, Jake's 16-year-old sister, also ran the race alongside her brother in honor of their father.

"Not only are we doing it for him but we're helping raise money and awareness for other families who have gone through similar things that we have," she said.

After Kinzler's death, the family started the Jason Kinzler First Family Foundation, which helps provide financial assistance to families with young children who have experienced the unexpected loss of a primary care-giver.
If you would like more information regarding the Jason Kinzler Family First Foundation, or know of a family that could benefit from their services, click here.
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Read Full Story

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Teen finishes race wearing his late father's running shoes

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Jason Kinzler died of a heart attack just one mile from the finish line of the Fifth Third River Bank Run 25K in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on May 14, 2011. Six years later, his 14-year-old son Jake finished the race for him -- while wearing his late father's shoes.

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Boston wins the series 4-3 to advance to the Conference Finals against Cleveland winning against Washington 115-105 with IT4 dropping 29 points.

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Donald Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said today the president did not know where the information he shared with Russian officials had originated and described the conversation as "wholly appropriate."

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Donald Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said today the president did not know where the information he shared with Russian officials had originated and described the conversation as "wholly appropriate."

"The president wasn't even aware where this information came from. He wasn't briefed on the source or method of the information either," McMaster said at a press briefing.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump had disclosed classified information in a meeting with Russian officials last week. McMaster initially called the story "false," but today described the premise of the story as "false."

"What was shared was wholly appropriate given the purpose of that conversation and the purpose of what the president was trying to achieve through that meeting," McMaster said.

When pressed by ABC News' Jonathan Karl, McMaster would not say if Trump had disclosed classified information. Trump said in a pair of tweets Tuesday he had the "absolute right" to share "facts" with the Russians.

"We don't say what's classified, what's not classified. What I will tell you again is that what the president shared was wholly appropriate," he said.

On Monday, McMaster said "at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known."

McMaster said he was in the room for the May 10 meeting in the Oval Office, noting that the larger conversation was "about the terrorist threat."

"The president was emphasizing we have some common interests here. We have to work together in critical areas," McMaster said.

"So this was the context of the conversation in which it was wholly appropriate to share what the threat was as a basis for common action and coordination," he said.

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Trump didn't know source of information shared with Russia, adviser says

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Donald Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said today the president did not know where the information he shared with Russian officials had originated and described the conversation as "wholly appropriate." "The president wasn't even aware where this information came from. He wasn't...

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North Korea's missile program is progressing faster than expected.Test missiles have been detected by U.S. THAAD anti missile system that is in South Korea

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Reuters 3 hrs ago Christine Kim and Tom Miles

North Korea's missile programme is progressing faster than expected, South Korea's defence minister said on Tuesday, after the UN Security Council demanded the North halt all nuclear and ballistic missile tests and condemned Sunday's test-launch.

Han Min-koo told South Korea's parliament the test-launch had been detected by the controversial U.S. THAAD anti-missile system, whose deployment in the South has infuriated China.

The reclusive North, which has defied all calls to rein in its weapons programmes, even from its lone major ally, China, said the missile test was a legitimate defence against U.S. hostility.

The North has been working on a missile, mounted with a nuclear warhead, capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has called for an immediate halt to Pyongyang's provocations and has warned that the "era of strategic patience" with North Korea is over. U.S. Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood said on Tuesday China's leverage was key and it could do more.

Han said Sunday's test-launch was "successful in flight".

"It is considered an IRBM (intermediate range ballistic missile) of enhanced calibre compared to Musudan missiles that have continually failed," he said, referring to a class of missile designed to travel up to 3,000 to 4,000 km (1,860 to 2,485 miles).

Asked if North Korea's missile programme was developing faster than the South had expected, he said: "Yes."

Han said the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile unit deployed by the U.S. military in the South detected the North Korean missile, marking the first time the controversial system has been put to use since its deployment last month.

China has strongly opposed THAAD, whose radar it fears could be used to spy into its territory, despite assurances from Washington that THAAD is purely defensive. South Korean companies, from automakers to retailers and cosmetics firms, have been hit in China by a nationalist backlash over Seoul's decision to deploy the system.

The North's KCNA news agency said Sunday's launch tested its capability to carry a "large-size heavy nuclear warhead". Its ambassador to China said in Beijing on Monday it would continue such test launches "any time, any place".

The test-launch was a legitimate act of self-defence and U.S. criticism was a "wanton violation of the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK", a North Korean diplomat told the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday.

DPRK are the initials of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The DPRK will bolster its self-defence capabilities as long as the United States continues its hostile policies towards the DPRK and imposes nuclear threats and makes blackmail," diplomat Ju Yong Choi said.

The missile flew 787 km (489 miles) on a trajectory reaching an altitude of 2,111.5 km (1,312 miles), KCNA said.

Pyongyang has regularly threatened to destroy the United States, which it accuses of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war by conducting recent military drills with South Korea and Japan.

Trump and new South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Washington next month, with North Korea expected to be high on the agenda, the South's presidential Blue House said.

Moon met Matt Pottinger, overseeing Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, on Tuesday and said he hoped to continue to have "sufficient, close discussions" between Seoul and Washington, the Blue House press secretary told a briefing.

"FURTHER SANCTIONS POSSIBLE"

In a unanimous statement, the 15-member UN Security Council on Monday said it was of vital importance that North Korea show "sincere commitment to denuclearization through concrete action and stressed the importance of working to reduce tensions".

"To that end, the Security Council demanded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conduct no further nuclear and ballistic missile tests," the council said, adding that it was ready to impose further sanctions on the country.

The North's foreign ministry rejected the statement, saying it infringed on its right to self-defence, particularly as the missile was test-launched at a sharp angle to ensure safety of neighbouring countries.

The UN statement also condemned an April 28 ballistic missile launch by Pyongyang.

Following that launch, Washington began talks with China on possible new U.N. sanctions. Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated new measures before involving remaining council members.

The United States sees China as key, U.S. Disarmament Ambassador Wood told reporters on a conference call.

"I'm not going to talk about various policy options that we may or may not consider, but I will say this: we are certainly engaged right now in looking at a number of measures - political, economic, security - to deal with these provocative acts by the DPRK, and dangerous acts in many cases," he said.

"So we are going to be raising the level of engagement with China on this issue. China really is the key in dealing with the North Korea issue. Ninety percent of the DPRK's trade is with China, so clearly there is a lot more leverage that China has, and we would like China to use."

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on North Korea in 2006 and has stiffened them in response to its five nuclear tests and two long-range rocket launches. Pyongyang is threatening a sixth nuclear test.

Trump warned in an interview with Reuters this month that a "major, major conflict" with North Korea was possible. In a show of force, the United States sent an aircraft carrier strike group, led by the Carl Vinson, to waters off the Korean peninsula to conduct drills with South Korea and Japan.

Admiral Harry Harris, the top U.S. commander in the Asia-Pacific, said continued missile launches by North Korea showed the importance of the alliance between Japan and the United States and called the North's actions unacceptable.

Harris met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who also said China could apply more pressure to rein in North Korea.

"Now is the time to put pressure on North Korea," Abe said. "Japan and the United States must coordinate and put pressure."

The U.S. Seventh Fleet carrier, the Ronald Reagan, left Yokosuka in Japan on Tuesday on its regular spring patrol and will be out for around three to four months, a Seventh Fleet spokesman said.

Besides worries about North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programmes, cyber security researchers have found technical evidence they said could link the North with the global WannaCry "ransomware" cyber attack that has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries since Friday.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS and Kiyoshi Takenaka and Minami Funakoshi in TOKYO; Writing by Nick Macfie)

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N.Korea missile detected by THAAD, programme progressing faster than expected-South

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Reuters 3 hrs ago Christine Kim and Tom Miles North Korea's missile programme is progressing faster than expected, South Korea's defence minister said on Tuesday, after the UN Security Council demanded the North halt all nuclear and ballistic missile tests and condemned Sunday's test-launch.

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James Harden Sued by Moses Malone Jr. for Allegedly Orchestrating Robbery

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Houston Rockets Scott Polacek Featured Columnist Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Houston Rockets star James Harden has reportedly been sued by Moses Malone Jr., who is the son of NBA legend Moses Malone.

On Monday, Isiah Carey of Fox 26 in Houston reported Malone Jr. filed a suit which "alleges Harden paid a group of people $20,000 in cash to attack and rob Malone at V-Live strip club last year."

The suit says Harden was upset Malone Jr. criticized the Rockets guard's decision to charge children for a basketball camp and responded by orchestrating the robbery.

Harden's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said, "I am in Boston for depositions so I haven't seen the petition, but I have previously discussed Moses' allegations with James and others, and I am totally comfortable that the allegations are untrue," per Carey. "Unfortunately, I am afraid this is just another example of people shopping for a deep pocket when they find that the people actually responsible have no money."

Marla Carter of ABC 13 in Houston reported in July 2016 police charged four men with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon from the incident. According to Carter, Malone Jr. said he was robbed of $15,000 in jewelry.

Malone Jr.'s attorney, George Farah, said Malone Jr.'s critical Facebook post of Harden "basically referenced the fact that James Harden was charging $250 for a basketball camp," per Carter.

William Axford of the Houston Chronicle cited court documents in 2016 which said one of the attackers told Malone he "disrespected James Harden and that he needs to be punished after that."

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James Harden Sued by Moses Malone Jr. for Allegedly Orchestrating Robbery

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Houston Rockets Scott Polacek Featured Columnist Ronald Martinez/Getty Images Houston Rockets star James Harden has reportedly been sued by Moses Malone Jr., who is the son of NBA legend Moses Malone. On Monday, Isiah Carey of Fox 26 in Houston reported Malone Jr.

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The night that cost Bryce Dejean-Jones his NBA dream-and his life

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around.

To take a deep breath.

To pace the hallway.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what Alvin Gentry, his coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, had told the 6'6" rookie shooting guard just a few weeks earlier? Bryce, you need to be able to walk away. Wasn't that what Dave Rice, his coach at UNLV, had said on multiple occasions? Bryce, you have to calm down. Wasn't that what Brian Beard, his AAU coach with the Compton Magic, had made so clear? Control yourself, Bryce. Control your emotions.
Control yourself, Bryce.
Basketball coaches liked Bryce Dejean-Jones. Pretty much everyone liked Bryce Dejean-Jones, most of the time. What with his goofy laugh, what with his devotion to signing autographs, what with his cravings for Chipotle burritos and pineapple-topped pizza, what with his talent for chess and his obsession with Xbox.

"He was a really good kid," says Justin Hawkins, his teammate in high school and then at UNLV. "He was funny. He had sarcasm to him. If he trusted you, he could open up and really let himself go."

But there was also this thing -this Bruce Banner-morphs-into-the-Incredible Hulk kind of rage that, upon reaching its boiling point, sent people running. On the basketball court, it revealed itself when Dejean-Jones felt his teammates weren't hustling, or a play wasn't designed correctly, or his unit wasn't living up to its potential, or a practice felt disheveled.

He would stomp his feet and clench his fists and fire off expletives with a machine-gun intensity: "Why aren't you guys fucking doing this right?"

Off the basketball court, this rage showed itself when Bryce Dejean-Jones drank.

Oh, he didn't imbibe particularly often. But during his half-decade college basketball career-first at Southern Cal, then at UNLV, then a final season at Iowa State-Dejean-Jones was involved in a handful of altercations, unreported until now, some of which also involved alcohol. "He was a good guy," recalls a teammate who requested anonymity, "who should not have been drinking."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, Dejean-Jones-fueled by alcohol, as well as marijuana, according to the toxicology report submitted by the coroner-found himself in a hallway at the Camden Belmont apartment complex in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood in Dallas.

His girlfriend lived with their one-year-old daughter in unit No. 1445, and the 203-pound Dejean-Jones was overcome with rage that he'd been locked out. According to witness reports, he proceeded to kick and punch the metal front door, repeatedly and with such force that he broke through a pair of deadbolts. Once inside, he tried opening the bedroom door, only to find that it too was locked.

That's when Dejean-Jones decided, once again, to break through.

That's when the occupant, a 22-year-old teacher, removed his gun from a nearby dresser and aimed at the door.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex, in unit No. 1345.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment.

It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond.

Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, that teacher had an opportunity to put the gun aside.

To take a deep breath.

To wait.

To gather himself.

Wasn't that exactly what he had learned as the son and younger brother of United States Marines? Yes, a gun can be used for self-defense, but know what you're doing. In college, he was a member of the school's pistol club, where the stated objective was to teach "basic handgun safety and marksmanship skills in a safe, friendly and convenient environment."
A safe, friendly and convenient environment.
Here, inside his bedroom, was as safe and friendly and convenient an environment as he knew. Although he had only relocated to Dallas from the Midwest 11 months earlier, the teacher was just starting to feel comfortable instructing the local high-schoolers only a few years younger than him.

No, the city wasn't home, but it was growing on him. He had friends. A quiet roommate who kept to himself. Restaurants and shops within walking distance. "I liked it there," he says. "I didn't have any complaints."

In the early morning hours of May 28, 2016, the teacher-having fallen asleep after watching Cleveland beat Toronto in Game 6 of the NBA 's Eastern Conference Finals-found himself stirred awake from beneath the blue comforter of his queen-sized bed. There was a banging at the front door of his apartment, unit No. 1345 on the third floor of the Camden Belmont apartment complex. Not a banging, he says in an interview-louder: a smashing.

"I would describe them as cracking noises," the teacher who shot Dejean-Jones tells B/R Mag, which agreed not to identify the shooter because he had not been charged with a crime and to protect him from potential retribution for speaking publicly for the first time. "Vicious cracks. It sounded like there were multiple people and that they were breaking into my apartment."

At that moment, the teacher sat up and-mind racing-opened the top drawer of the black nightstand situated alongside his bed. He reached for his Springfield 1911, a semi-automatic handgun that had been a college graduation gift from his father. He never kept the gun loaded, so after gripping it with his hand, he picked up the magazine-also in the nightstand-and loaded it.

For a couple of seconds, everything went quiet. At least one person, he was certain, had entered the apartment. The teacher pointed his gun at his bedroom door, which-out of habit dating back to living in a college house with too many free-roaming occupants-he kept locked. He says he called out: Hello! Then, a second time: Hello! The declaration was meant to let an intruder know he'd entered an occupied house. "Hopefully he hears me and leaves," the teacher recalls.

That's when-WHOMP!

A shoulder or foot slammed into the door.

The teacher could not see who was on the other side, only that his door was now shattered at the base of the locking mechanism.

That's when he decided he had no other choice.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired.

That's when he pulled the trigger and fired again.

That's when it became clear Bryce Dejean-Jones was, in fact, not on the fourth floor, in unit No. 1445.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was in the wrong apartment. He was 23 years old.

Bryce Dejean-Jones was living the dream. Yes, that's a cliche. But one year ago, having just signed a three-year deal with the Pelicans, it was true. Here was a kid from Inglewood, California, raised by his mother, Fran, and stepfather, K.C. This was a kid who had aspired to reach the NBA from the time he was six or seven. This was a life built around the NBA, or else.

Most everyone knows someone like Bryce-the kid shooting hoops in the backyard until 1 in the morning; the kid with calloused fingers and battered Nikes; the kid pretending to be Kobe Bryant, counting aloud from the shot clock in his mind. Three...two...one-he makes it! Bryce makes it!

"You could hear him outside behind the house," K.C., sitting on a couch inside the family's Inglewood home, recalls with a forced grin. "He was both the star and his own announcer."

Bryce bowled competitively. Rode a skateboard. Read all the Harry Potter books. Dreamed of inventing a flying car. Maintained an A average at the nearby Calgary Christian School.

"We swam, we shot baskets, we played video games," says Richard Solomon, a childhood friend who now plays pro ball in France. "Bryce was your average kid who just really, really wanted to become a professional basketball player."

He played at two high schools and was forced to sit his junior season after transferring from View Park Preparatory to William Howard Taft Charter High. ("He was allowed to play on our JV team, which was a joke," says Derrick Taylor, Taft's varsity coach. "We're talking about games that ended up 78-20, 91-18. No one could handle him.")

His AAU time was limited to one season with the Compton Magic. His birth father, Walter Dejean, re-emerged when Bryce was in ninth grade-a complicated period of divergent adult voices telling him what was best.

But then there was the temper. Bryce had one, and he did not manage it well.

During his freshman year at Southern Cal, he engaged in multiple confrontations during practices and had to be kicked out of the gym on several occasions. One afternoon, he fractured teammate Garrett Jackson's nose after being led to believe the freshman forward had spiked his drink.

"He was a good kid," says Kevin O'Neill, the Trojans coach, "who made some bad mistakes."

Bryce moved on to UNLV the following year and remained there for three seasons. On the court, he could be dynamic. After sitting out the requisite redshirt year, he averaged 10.3 points and 2.3 assists in 2012-13. But, as O'Neill did at USC, UNLV coach Dave Rice found Dejean-Jones difficult to handle.

On the one hand, he loved his drive. "Off the charts," Rice says. "I don't think I've ever coached someone who wanted to win so badly." Yet Rice, too, had to boot Dejean-Jones from multiple practices-sometimes forcibly.

"He definitely had moods, and there were times you'd need help from assistants getting him off the floor," Rice says. "But I'm telling you, he didn't want to hurt people. He just wanted to win desperately."

Dejean-Jones' last campaign in Las Vegas was 2013-14, and after the Rebels' season-ending loss to San Diego State, he found himself in yet another heated standoff, this time with UNLV guard Jelan Kendrick.

Kendrick declined to comment about the incident, but according to a source close to the UNLV program, Kendrick threatened to "bust" Dejean-Jones "in the head"-which Bryce interpreted as a death threat. "It got to the point where Jelan was about to call his people and Bryce was about to call his," says Hawkins, Dejean-Jones' high school teammate who played at UNLV.

Rice made it clear Dejean-Jones was not welcome back for a fourth season, and after graduating from UNLV with a degree in sociology, he transferred to Iowa State for a final college run at the pros.

Dejean-Jones played well as a graduate student and enjoyed the peaceful isolation of Ames, Iowa. He averaged 10.5 points and lit up Arkansas for 27 points in a Cyclones win December 4, 2014.

Yet there's a long history of the naively unrealistic regenerative powers of new schools and new coaches and new teams believing all a person needs is change. Bryce was Bryce: Along with the passion and heart came the propensity for finding himself in bad situations. Were they always his fault? Absolutely not. But they continued to occur.

One week later, a noise complaint on Dejean-Jones' apartment led to an arrest for gathering where marijuana was used. The charges were quickly dropped, and Dejean-Jones was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Fred Hoiberg, the head coach, still suspended him from the upcoming game against archrival Iowa.

"That was it for Bryce," says Matt Abdelmassih, an Iowa State assistant coach. "He was a great kid. A great, great kid. But he felt like our program left him hanging out to dry, and he was probably right. From that point on, things spiraled out of control."

Dejean-Jones arrived late to the next game, and Hoiberg permanently removed him from the starting lineup. "He still played hard and well," Abdelmassih says. "But-I'd say unfairly-his reputation was sealed. Three schools, a bunch of incidents. That's hard to escape.

"But here's the thing: Most of what got him in trouble was his drive to win. He loved basketball. I mean, you won't find a kid who loves basketball more than Bryce. And he expected perfection and dedication from everyone. When he didn't see it, he lost his cool. It's unfortunate, because his temper owned him sometimes. And, deep down, he's one of the best guys I ever coached."

People who knew Dejean-Jones well speak of his college time as lost opportunity. But he failed to see it that way. The outbursts, the anger, the frustration-it was never anything personal. He simply did not want to be a college basketball player and felt constrained and uncomfortable in the amateur surroundings.

"He wasn't made for college," says Tyrell Jamerson, a former UNLV point guard who worked as Bryce's private coach. "His game was all NBA, and he knew that all along. You don't have isolation in college, you're not breaking defenders down in college. It's system-oriented in the NCAA. He was always a pro waiting to go pro."

Because of all the incidents, and the reputation as a hothead, and the so-so statistical line (Bryce averaged 10.8 points and 2.3 assists in 117 total collegiate games), Dejean-Jones was bypassed in the 2015 NBA draft. He hired an agent but ignored his representative's encouragement to try to sign a lucrative contract in Europe or Australia. He was all about the NBA.

Two years ago, Dejean-Jones latched on with the Pelicans' summer-league team in Las Vegas, averaging 12.8 points over six games. Still, questions about his maturity lingered.

During one matchup against Brooklyn, he hit a three-pointer over Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the first-round selection out of Arizona, then was called for a technical foul for taunting. Seth Davis, calling the game for NBA TV, was apoplectic: "You weren't drafted because there are questions about your temperament...and then you act like a blockhead?!"

As the NBA season began, Dejean-Jones signed with the Boise Stampede of the NBA Development League and spent five miserable weeks hating every moment of it. If the intensity of Division I college basketball often disappointed him, how could he possibly handle the every-man-for-himself world of NBA Lite? Answer: Not well.

Dejean-Jones nearly came to blows with one D-League teammate during practice and another time engaged in a shouting match with Dean Cooper, the head coach. "But he was all about winning, and I loved that," Cooper says. "This is not an embellishment: Bryce would dive on the floor five, six, seven times per game. He had no regard for his body. There are guys who don't dive that often in a full season.

"So could he be difficult? Yes. Would I want him on my team? Every single time."

Dejean-Jones averaged 19.2 points in nine games with Boise, and while many of his teammates found his competitiveness insufferable, he could not have cared less. "It was his dream," his father says. "He was chasing it with everything he had."

That's why, when Dell Demps, general manager of the Pelicans, called with a 10-day contract offer on January 21, 2016, Dejean-Jones didn't know how to respond. Was he supposed to cry? Scream? Dance? Punch?

"He called me, real calm," says his mother, Fran Jones. "He said, 'I have to pack because I'm leaving in two hours.' I asked where he was going, and he told me. He was really pumped up. He wasn't crying, because we're not big criers. But his dream was always the NBA, and now he was an NBA player. That was amazing."

In the weeks that followed, Dejean-Jones behaved, well, perfectly. Gentry knew of his track record but saw none of the immaturity or temper. There were no fights, no punches, no complaints.

"I like it here," Dejean-Jones told the New Orleans Advocate in January. "I think the system suits me well, and I was given the chance to go out and play and make the most of it."

Unlike other NBA head coaches, who consider D-League refugees little more than sideline filler, Gentry wanted to see what the kid could do. So after coming in off the bench for his first three games, Dejean-Jones moved into the starting lineup. His first 10-day contract became a second 10-day contract, then the long-term deal.

"I really liked his game," Gentry says. "He was very tough, very athletic. He could guard different positions, and he was extremely hungry. When someone has that level of talent, but he doesn't see failing in the NBA as an option, you have something unique."

Dejean-Jones averaged 5.6 points and 3.4 rebounds before his season ended with a fractured right wrist. Yet he was, at long last, an NBA player.

"I think he really grew with us," Gentry says. "The difficult phase had passed, and he attained his goal. I think he realized he needed to change his ways to stay in the league. He was smart enough to do that."

Bryce Dejean-Jones should never have gone to Dallas. A year later, it's the part that still gets people.

He didn't like to talk about her, but Dejean-Jones had what he considered to be an on-again, off-again girlfriend. Her name is Chrystal Graves. She was a native of Camden, Arkansas, whom he met while attending UNLV. Graves graduated cum laude from Southern Arkansas University in 2014, then took a job as an elementary school teacher. She was bright and pretty and energetic.

And, in the later months of 2014, she was also pregnant.

Dejean-Jones, who was busy trying to go pro, did not receive the news warmly. Though Graves declined to speak with B/R Mag, friends of Dejean-Jones say the two had a tempestuous relationship, marked by frequent arguments. "He complained about her a lot," a former Iowa State confidant says. "It wasn't a healthy pairing."

Yet having been raised largely without his biological father around, Bryce committed himself to being an involved dad to their daughter, who was born on May 28, 2015. That's why he decided to fly to Dallas, where Chrystal now worked as a teacher: to be with their daughter for her first birthday.

People familiar with Bryce and Chrystal's difficult relationship insist they discouraged the trip. Shabazz Muhammad, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward who trained under Jamerson with Dejean-Jones in the offseason, says he urged his friend to skip Dallas and take a trek with him to Las Vegas. "He worked so hard, I wanted him to come along, have fun, relax," Muhammad recalls. "But he wasn't changing his plans."

Jamerson, meanwhile, hated the idea of Dejean-James going to Dallas. "He'd never been there; he didn't know the city," Jamerson says. "I was worried, and I told him I'd fly his girlfriend and daughter out to California for him. He didn't want that, but I should have insisted. I really should have. It's my greatest regret."

Walter Dejean, Bryce's father, was with Jamerson. "Bryce and I fought about it," he says. "One day he said he wouldn't go, then he decided he would go. It didn't get heated, but I thought he should bring Chrystal and Ally to California-we would all be able to see the baby. But he wasn't changing his mind. He had to go to Texas."

Bryce Dejean-Jones flew from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth on the afternoon of May 24, 2016 and took an Uber to Chrystal's two-bedroom apartment in the upscale Camden Belmont.

On their fourth night together, the couple decided to go out on the town. According to Graves' statement to the Dallas Police Department, they found a last-minute babysitter via Craigslist, and at approximately 9 p.m. dropped their daughter off at a home at 2505 Peabody Ave. They proceeded to grab a bite at BuzzBrews, a 24-hour eatery, then drove in Graves' car to Bungalow Beach Club downtown. Chrystal and Bryce spent approximately three hours at the club, which featured a pool, DJ and bottle service.

According to Graves, she and Bryce spent time apart inside Bungalow Beach, and she was "not sure" if he used drugs or alcohol. Later, however, Dejean-Jones' blood-alcohol level was 0.188 (for his weight, anything over 0.08 is considered legally intoxicated), and he also tested positive for marijuana.

Bryce, Chrystal and Shaneka Kelly, Chrystal's friend, departed Bungalow Beach at approximately 2:30 a.m., and the ensuing 20-minute drive to retrieve the baby was not a pleasant one.

"Graves says that when they arrived at the babysitter's place," reads the police report, "she and the complainant were already arguing about the usual things like money, the living arrangements, etc."

Chrystal, who was driving, asked Bryce to go inside and pick up their daughter. Before he exited the car, however, she reminded him to grab the diaper bags and bottles. That set him off. As Chrystal placed their daughter in her car seat, she turned and saw Bryce walking away in a huff-down Peabody Avenue, then right onto Latimer Street.

She called his phone, but it had fallen out of his pocket and was resting on the passenger seat. She circled the block several times before giving up, leaving the Dallas novice to navigate the 4.7-mile walk back to her place alone.

Graves told police she returned to apartment No. 1445, where she put her daughter to bed and fell asleep on the couch.

The next hour remains a mystery to police, to Graves, to Dejean-Jones' family. But Bryce made it back to the Camden Belmont and, despite not having a key, was able to enter the building (on weekend nights, there's often a steady stream of residents coming and going).

Maybe he had run there. Maybe he hitchhiked. Maybe he was the world's fastest walker. "Maybe he got robbed," his stepfather wonders, "because the police told us there was no money in his wallet."

Whatever the case, Dejean-Jones could not have been in the best of moods as he entered the elevator, took it to the third floor (instead of the fourth), turned to the first unit on the left and began his assault on the door to apartment No. 1345.

One of the many strange details of the night was that, while the teacher's apartment was filled with tables and chairs and pictures and the like, Graves-who just moved in a week earlier-had yet to furnish.

"It makes no sense to me," says Walter, Bryce's father. "None. Even if he were a wild man kicking in the door. I mean, let's say that's true. Don't you think he'd immediately see the furniture and say, 'Shit, I'm in the wrong place' and walk out? I'm not saying anyone is lying.

But it doesn't fully compute.

"If the man living in that apartment felt so threatened that he had to shoot my son like a dead dog, at least tell me how it happened. Because I can't make any sense out of it."

Here-according to the man who shot Bryce Dejean-Jones, in an interview with B/R Mag-is how it happened:
After he slammed on my bedroom door, you could kind of see some light pouring in through the edges of the door. And my bedroom door was locked, yes, although it was never attempted to be opened by the handle, just slammed into or kicked. And at that point, I did feel very afraid. I did not know who, what or how many people were on the other side of the door or what their intentions were. But I did know their intentions were violent. Fearing for my life, I took two shots through the door. After I took those two shots, I immediately called 911, and in the course of that he stumbled out into the breezeway and then 911 called me. I, at that point, was afraid to leave my room. I was too scared to really do anything but just stand there and talk to the police. After a minute or two, I was able to look through one of the holes from the bullets in the door. At that point I saw blood in my apartment but nobody in the apartment. The front door was wide-open. Somebody broke in-you could tell. At that point, I left my apartment and came into the main area with my roommate. We didn't leave our apartment, we didn't do anything, we didn't chase after anybody. We stayed in the apartment, where we stood for the several minutes it took until the police came. During that time, I was on the phone with the operator. Pretty much just holding the firearm, waiting for the police.
The teacher says he never saw Dejean-Jones, whose body, now lifeless, was found out in the hall by police. He also says he knew it wasn't his roommate banging into his door because, well, that would make no sense. His roommate was a smallish man-and, besides, why would he break into his own apartment?

No charges were filed against the teacher. Under Texas law, a person is allowed to use deadly force to defend themselves in their home. It also says a person using force cannot provoke an attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time.

The teacher agreed to talk about the shooting publicly for the first time to B/R Mag because, he says, too much misinformation has been making the rounds on social media. There were rumors that Dejean-Jones was robbing the apartment; rumors that the teacher fired for no reason.

"I believe the family deserves to at least know what really happened," he says. "They deserve an opportunity to hear the story."

Despite the family's repeated requests, K.C. Jones says they have never received a copy of the police report and that his son's possessions have yet to be returned. In response to a request for comment for this story, a representative for the Dallas Police Department told B/R Mag the DPD would reach out to K.C. and Fran Jones to take care of the matter, and last week K.C. said he finally received a letter regarding property retrieval. But still, he wrote in a text to B/R Mag, "no report."

"I still can't figure out why."

The phone rang inside the Jones home at approximately 3:30 in the morning. A groggy K.C., still 90 percent asleep, answered.

"Is this the father of Bryce Dejean-Jones?"

It was Baylor Hospital in Dallas. A woman was on the other line. "Your son has been in an accident. He was shot."

By now Fran was awake, and K.C. put the call on speaker.

"OK, OK," Fran said. "Shot? So is he going to be OK?"

Silence.

Within the hour, Walter's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. Another of his biological sons, Khalil Muhammad, is an amateur boxer, and earlier that night he had suffered a brutal defeat in a bout outside of Los Angeles.

"He got ripped up," Walter says. "But all through warm-ups he kept saying he didn't feel right, something didn't feel right. He never looked like himself." Now Walter was standing inside the L.A. emergency room as his son was attended to. The phone kept buzzing; he kept ignoring it. Finally, he picked up.

It was Fran.

"What's up?" Walter said.

"Bryce," she said. "Bryce is dead."

Silence.

"No he isn't," Walter said. "What are you talking about?"

"He's dead," Fran said. "He's dead."

"What do you do when someone tells you your child is gone?" Walter says, a year later. "You cry."

Cemeteries are confounding places for many reasons, one of which is that they seek-and inevitably fail-to define complicated lives within a couple of words chiseled into a rock.

The body of Bryce Dejean-Jones was laid to rest in the Inglewood Park Cemetery, in a pine box beneath a small plot of grass on what the employees here identify, coldly, as spot 406D of the Siesta section.

His tombstone, purchased by his family, reads: BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FATHER. Below his name and dates of birth and death are another four words: FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS.

To the immediate left of Dejean-Jones' grave is the tombstone belonging to Bonnie Lee Beggs, who was born on February 12, 1956 and died 34 days later. Beggs was resting, unbuckled, atop her mother's lap in the front seat of the family car when a collision threw her out the window. She died of a head injury at Kaiser Hospital. That was 61 years ago.

When K.C. Jones hears the story of baby Bonnie, who never had the opportunity to live fully, he finds a small comfort.

Bryce, the family knows, was far from perfect. His temper was bad. His unwillingness to stick with one school was frustrating. He could be maddeningly stubborn, and Kennedy Jones, his younger brother who is now a sophomore in high school, says he took plenty of thumpings from Bryce. And yet, Bryce was compassionate. And giving. He would have done anything for his mother, and he wanted to start a foundation to help at-risk children.

What allows K.C. and Fran and Walter to smile through their pain, however briefly, is that their son-who died three months before his 24th birthday-was able to reach his singular aspiration. Sixteen years earlier, Bryce had told people he was destined for the NBA. And then he became a Pelican. "What are the odds?" Fran asks. "Think about that."

Many people surrender their dreams and settle for the comfort of meh. Others, like Bonnie Lee Beggs, never get the chance for either.

Yes, Bryce Dejean-Jones died in a violent, confusing manner at just 23 years old.

But he died a professional basketball player.

He died living the dream.

Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books. His latest, GUNSLINGER: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre, is is available here. He podcasts daily here.
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The Night That Cost Bryce Dejean-Jones His Life-and NBA Dream

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It might have been a second, or a millisecond, or a milli of a millisecond. Even were it the absolute slightest measure of time, Bryce Dejean-Jones had an opportunity to turn around. To take a deep breath. To pace the hallway. To gather himself.

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National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday adamantly defended President Donald Trump’s conversations with Russian officials as “wholly appropriate,” pushing back for a second day on a news report claiming the president revealed highly classified information on an Islamic State terror threat during that meeting.

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National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday adamantly defended President Trump's conversations with Russian officials as "wholly appropriate," pushing back for a second day on a news report claiming the president revealed highly classified information on an Islamic State terror threat during that meeting.

During a tense White House briefing, McMaster also ripped the leaks fueling such media reports - and said the president was not "even aware" of the source of the information he apparently shared with the Russians.

"He wasn't briefed on the source and method of the information," McMaster said.

McMaster's central contention was that the details discussed in that meeting concerned ongoing operations that were public for months and information available in "open source reporting."

"The president in no way compromised any sources or methods in the course of this conversation," McMaster said.

The same official publicly had refuted The Washington Post report on Monday evening, describing the claims as false.

The president himself has since acknowledged he shared "facts" about the terror threat with Russia, while saying he was in his right to do so.

Trump spoke briefly about the controversy Tuesday in between meetings with visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He said he had a "very, very successful meeting" with the Russian foreign minister earlier this month, and the U.S. wants to get as much help as possible in the fight against terrorism.

"We're going to have a lot of great success over the next coming years," Trump said.

McMaster on Tuesday continued to dispute the premise of the Post story. While acknowledging Trump shared information with the Russians, he maintained the discussion was appropriate.

"I stand by my statement that I made yesterday ... the premise of that article is false," he said. "... That conversation was wholly appropriate."

The White House has not explicitly denied classified information was shared, but has - along with the Kremlin - denied the framing of the original report. McMaster denied that the conversation was inappropriate or that it resulted in any lapse in security.

Rather, he said the leaks are what put security at risk.

"The national security has been put at risk by those violating confidentiality," McMaster said.

The New York Times reported Tuesday afternoon that the intelligence in question was actually provided by Israel.

Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the United States, said in a statement responding to the report: "Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump."

The Washington Post report has only fueled tensions on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and some Republicans are fuming over Trump's decision last week to fire FBI Director James Comey. Some Democrats suggest he did so to blunt the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and alleged ties to the Trump campaign, and the revelation of sensitive information being shared with Moscow only stoked that political fire.

Trump reportedly shared information about an ISIS threat involving the use of laptops on planes. The Post report quoted unnamed officials saying he revealed the city where an intelligence partner detected the threat.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers raised concerns about the implications of such information being disclosed, especially to the Russians.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo plans to brief House Intelligence Committee members late Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday downplayed the developments, but also told Bloomberg Business TV "we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things" so lawmakers can focus on a policy agenda.

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White House says Trump info-sharing with Russia 'wholly appropriate,' rips leaks

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National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday adamantly defended President Trump's conversations with Russian officials as "wholly appropriate," pushing back for a second day on a news report claiming the president revealed highly classified information on an Islamic State terror threat during that meeting.

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A 14-year-old physics major who was the youngest person to graduate from Texas Christian University said he doesn't regret missing out on the normal "college experience." "Nothing at all.

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A 14-year-old physics major who was the youngest person to graduate from Texas Christian University said he doesn't regret missing out on the normal "college experience."

"Nothing at all," Carson Huey-You told Ainsley Earhardt on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday.

"Overall it was a positive experience. I really liked going and learning all the stuff that I can learn to grow," he added.

The teenager joined more than 2,000 students at graduation on Saturday to get his diploma at the Fort Worth school founded in 1873.

"It was very exciting, but I was also really really nervous. I actually ended up walking past the dean of Science and Engineering and not giving him a handshake," Huey-You recalled.
TRAYVON MARTIN RECEIVES POSTHUMOUS AERONAUTICAL SCIENCE DEGREE
Huey-You started at TCU in 2013 when he was just 11 years old. He also earned a minor in Chinese and math. Huey-You now plans to get his graduate degree in quantum mechanics.

Though he is the youngest to graduate from the university so far, Huey-You has some competition: his 11-year-old brother Cannan who will also be attending TCU in the fall.

"I'm going to double major in physics and astronomy and also engineering," Cannan Huey-You said.
TRUMP TO LIBERTY U GRADS: RELISH BEING AN 'OUTSIDER'
As for the secret to having two successful children? Huey-You's mother, Claretta Kimp, said there's no "magic pill."

"I think I did what every other loving parent does. I nurtured, showed a lot of patience and was there for them to just support them in whatever direction they wanted to go," Kimp told Fox & Friends.

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Youngest Texas Christian University grad says he has no regrets at all

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A 14-year-old physics major who was the youngest person to graduate from Texas Christian University said he doesn't regret missing out on the normal "college experience." "Nothing at all," Carson Huey-You told Ainsley Earhardt on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday. "Overall it was a positive experience.

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Mr. Kohl- In South Carolina a coroner says the teen suffered a caffeine-induced cardiac event. He collapsed at school after drinking a large Diet Mountain Dew, a Café Latte from McDonalds, and an energy drink.

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Mr. Kohl- In South Carolina a coroner says the teen suffered a caffeine-induced cardiac event. He collapsed at school after drinking a large Diet Mountain Dew, a Café Latte from McDonalds, and an energy drink.

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Caffeine concern - a 16-year-old collapsed at school and died after consuming three caffeinated beverages

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Experts say things like this shouldn't happen unless there's an underlying health concern. That being said - there is still the chance for too much of a good thing.