There is an eerie, tragic connective thread that now runs between Brandon Miller and Jalen Carter. They are star Southeastern Conference athletes who, according to police, are lucky to be alive. On the same early mid-January morning, at almost the same exact time, hundreds of miles apart, Miller and Carter seemed to have courted death through alarmingly negligent behavior.
At 2:45 a.m. ET on Sunday, Jan. 15, authorities in Athens, Ga., responded to a call of a single-vehicle crash on Barnett Shoals Road. They found a Ford Expedition that had left the roadway and plowed through two power poles and several trees. The accident killed Georgia football player Devin Willock and football staffer Chandler LeCroy, who police say was driving the car at an extreme rate of speed with a blood-alcohol level of 0.197, twice the legal limit.
At 1:45 a.m. CT that same day, shots were fired in downtown Tuscaloosa in a gunfight near a busy entertainment district. The shootout ended with Jamea Jonae Harris dead at the scene. A former Alabama basketball player, Darius Miles, is charged with capital murder after allegedly providing the gun for his friend and alleged trigger man, Michael Davis.
