Ex-football player shot dead by LA cops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm of two minds on this one. A large powerful man on mesc, and who knows what else, can be almost impossible to stop short of lethal force. I was a prison guard and even at my size was more than once nearly laid out by a runt on speedball. Whatever that is. I don't really know anything about modern recreational drugs but 'speedball' sounded cool, and I more than once bounced a lead sap off of the brainhousing group of someone flying high and got nothing but a barely audible grunt in return, so the billyclub deal isn't guaranteed to work.

Nowhere in the article is any reference made of an attempt to Tase the guy, but that doesn't mean they didn't. Problem is, the cops, particularly California ones, aren't exactly known for their less than lethal approach to anything. And the fact that Reginald's name was revealed but not the name of the cop that killed him really bothers me. You try it. Even after a good shoot the cops are going to spread your name like wildfire.