by Ray Lewis
I heard that and I couldn’t believe it. Stabbing deaths? I hadn’t seen a knife, seen any kind of scuffle other than that hit to the head with the champagne bottle. When we pulled away from that mess, it really wasn’t all that much of a mess. Yeah, there were those shots fired, but we were already on our way by then. That was in our rear view. Wasn’t anything in my full-on view to suggest anyone had been stabbed. It was just crazy, scary, impossible. All of that. At the time, I didn’t know anything but these few details, so I was caught between thinking of the whole thing as a sad tragedy for the families of these two dudes who’d been killed and thinking we’d just stepped into some serious trouble. Last thing in the world I would have wanted was to bring trouble to my family or to the Ravens, or to myself.
I couldn’t think of what to do—like I said, my head was bursting. So I called my girl Tatyana, who was staying at her aunt’s house in town with our two boys. Couldn’t say what time it was, but it was early morning—early, like before the sun. I said, “Look, there’s some crazy business going down here. Give me your address so I can find my way over to you.”
Tatyana said, “What crazy business, Ray? Tell me.”
I said, “Don’t you worry about it. Don’t even know myself, but I wasn’t involved. We were caught up in some stuff, is all. I’ll explain when I get there.”
Next, I called my driver—said, “Dwayne, you awake?”
He said, “I can’t talk to you right now.”
I said, “What you mean you can’t talk to me right now? Yes, hell, you can talk to me. You watching the news? You see what’s going down?”
He said, “No, I can’t talk to you right now. I’m with the police.”
I said, “Right now? You with the police right now?”
He said, “They’re right next to me, asking questions.”
I said, “Let me talk to them. Put someone on the phone.”
Dwayne handed his phone to the lead detective.
I said, “Detective, this is Ray Lewis. What’s going on?”
He said, “Mr. Lewis, where are you?”
I said, “Wherever you need me to be.”
We went back and forth a couple times, trying to come up with a good place to meet, so I gave him the address of Tatyana’s aunt—where I was already headed. The deal was we were supposed to head to the airport from there, but looking back, other than not calling the cops right away after all those shots had been fired at our limo, this was the big mistake of that long night, because it set it up so this next encounter would play out in front of my boys. I hadn’t thought things through to this point, because I hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t even seen anything done wrong, other than these shots being fired—and that type of thing, the world I was living in, it ain’t nothing unless somebody’s hit.
Far as I was concerned, I was just a witness—a witness who hadn’t seen anything—so why would I even think to keep my boys from this little meeting with the cops? It played out, I should have thought this way, but there was no basis for it. I was just fixing to tell what I knew—which, like I said, wasn’t much.
Can’t remember if I got to the house ahead of the cops or if they were waiting on me when I pulled up, because these next moments are just a blur. What I do remember is standing on the lawn in front of the house, daylight already, one of my sons clinging to my leg, the other in my arms. Tatyana’s aunt lived in a nice suburban neighborhood, on a pretty little cul-de-sac. I can still picture that moment in my mind—probably the most defeating, most deflating moment of my life.
This cop crossed over to where I was standing with my boys, stepped to me in this superior way. Looked at me like I was dirt before we even started talking.
I tried to keep my cool, mostly because I had my boys with me, but also because I knew how ugly things could get if I didn’t check myself—like I said, when you poke at me, I’m a different dude. And this police officer, he was poking at me, hard. Threatening me, hard.
He said, “I guarantee you’ll fall for this one.”
Those were the first words out of his mouth.
I guarantee you’ll fall for this one.
I said, “What?”
Like I needed this man to repeat himself—but he did. He elaborated on it, too. Told me it was people like me, with money, thought we were above the law, better than the law. That we were to blame for what was wrong in the world. There was all kinds of ignorant nonsense coming out of this hateful cop’s mouth. And it set me off. I’m sorry, but I got my back up. I knew better, but there it was—in front of my kids, even.
The cop said, “Who else was in the car with you, Mr. Lewis?”
I said, “Man, I don’t know everybody in the damn car. How the hell am I supposed to know everybody in the damn car?” This was the truth, but I could have said it without yelling, getting up in this man’s face. I could have just told how it was.
And the interrogation—because that’s what it was—just went on from there. The cop said, “You mean to tell me you’ve got this Navigator limo, you’re out at a club, and you don’t know the names of the other passengers in the vehicle?”
I said, “Hell no! How am I supposed to know everybody’s names?” Yelling, still—even louder. Oh man. I was fuming.
Months later, after everything went down, after I had no choice but to cop to something, this was what they nailed me for—this stupid conversation with this stupid cop on the front lawn of my girl’s aunt’s house. What they nailed me for, specifically, was obstruction of justice. Go ahead and read the court documents, pull up my records, check the papers—this is what you’ll see. Obstruction of justice. This is what that looks like, apparently. Because I didn’t take down the names of everyone who was riding with us that night after the Super Bowl. Those sisters we’d “rescued” outside the club. Those other girls, those other dudes—what was I supposed to do, check everybody’s ID, take down their personal information before letting them ride with me? It was just a party, man—had nothing to do with whatever happened to those two young men. And at this point I still had no idea what happened to them.
After a couple beats, the cop got out of my face, and I turned to take my boys inside, get them away from this ugliness. I didn’t want them to see me all agitated, to see me on the receiving end of this kind of treatment. But as I was walking to this house, this other cop came up to me—said, “Hey, brother. I’m with you, man.”
He was black, of course. Right away, I could see what was going on. They were pulling this black cop/white cop move. Good cop/bad cop. Playing one off the other—me in the middle, getting yanked every which way.
The black cop said, “You just need to tell us everything that happened, brother. Just tell us what you know.” Trying to keep me calm, trying to keep me talking.
The whole time these cops were going after me, I was thinking of my mom. You talk about getting in trouble? You talk about the law? My entire life, growing up, she was the law in our house. I lived in fear of letting that good woman down—going all the way back, for years and years, before I was even old enough to make any kind of real trouble. This right here? Police procedure? Holding out until my attorney was present? Whatever was going on with these two cops on that front lawn? I had no frame of reference for it, no mind for it. I’d never been in trouble in my life, so I didn’t know to keep quiet. Oh, I knew. But not enough to lawyer up and chill.
So I kept walking into the house, running my mouth the whole time—said, “I’ll say it again, officer. Ain’t nothing to tell.”
We took the conversation inside, my boys by my side the entire time. They were little, too little to understand what was going on, but their eyes were wide. Their faces worried. They could see their daddy was getting agitated. They could see these other men being aggressive, challenging. But I didn’t have it in me to hush. I didn’t have it in me to listen politely and then say my piece. I was irritated, man. These dudes were on me.
The black cop said, “Just talk to us, Mr. Lewi
s. We can figure this out.”
I said, “Like I told you, ain’t nothing to figure out.”
The white cop said, “It don’t matter. People like you, this is what you do.”
This set me off. People like you. Better believe it, this set me off. We were standing in the hallway, my boys at my side, but I turned to this man and spoke my mind—said, “I’m telling you, I will slap the taste right out of your mouth.”
I probably shouldn’t have spoken like that to a police officer—I get this, now—but then, he probably shouldn’t have spoken that way to me. You get what you give, only here it was an unfair trade. These cops, they had their weapons, and at this point the white cop put his hand on his pistol. He didn’t draw but he was ready. However this confrontation was gonna go, he was good and ready.
I said, “You do what you gotta do. I’m good. I’m good with me. I guarantee you, I’m good with me. And if you pull that trigger in front of my sons, I guarantee you, they will remember me.”
Those words can come across in a passionate way, like I was making some kind of emotional plea. But it wasn’t like that. No, I was angry—emotional, yeah, but angry. Felt to me like I was being violated—in front of my girl, in front of my children. My boys were crying, because they’d never seen me this way, so I went to comfort them. Tatyana, she went to comfort them. But there was no one to comfort me.
This confrontation with these two officers, it went on for the longest time. The house was just a big pile of commotion, all kinds of yelling, all kinds of crying, so I slipped into the next room—a little room they had off the front door. I sat down, took a deep breath, tried to keep myself from myself.
I didn’t know to panic. I didn’t know to worry. It never occurred to me that I was in trouble with the law—just with this one dude who seemed to have it out for me. That’s all. I had no knowledge of what happened to those two young men. I hadn’t been involved in any altercation other than that business with the Moët bottle just before we drove off, other than those shots fired at our car. In the light of day, I was realizing I should have called that in, but that was on me. This? These hateful fools, judging me, convicting me, telling me I would fall for these stabbings even though I knew they couldn’t have the tiniest piece of evidence against me? This was something else, man.
He wasn’t about to arrest me, I could see that. He had no call to arrest me. So we sat there for a while, and I gathered myself, swallowed my pride, tried to get past it. I said, “Look, we all have a flight to make. We need to get out to the airport.”
These two cops, they just kind of stepped back a bit, put up their hands to say, Hey, we can’t stop you. So me and Tatyana, we got the boys ready, got her things ready. The plan was for her aunt to drop us off. Usually, that type of situation, I’d get behind the wheel and drive. But here Tatyana stopped me—said, “Probably not a good idea, Ray. They’ll pull you over for nothing.”
She was right, of course, so I walked back around to the other side of the car and Tatyana’s aunt got behind the wheel. The boys were in the backseat just crying, crying, crying. They’d been holding it together pretty good back in the house, trying to be big, brave men in front of those police officers, but now that it was just me and their mom and their auntie, they let loose. It got so bad, we had to pull over, and I got in the backseat with them, tried to comfort them, tell them everything was gonna be okay. And I honestly believed that at the time, that everything was gonna be okay, because I hadn’t done anything wrong except maybe show some poor judgment, maybe run my mouth a little with these cops. But I was no criminal.
And then the craziest thing happened—like a car chase, in reverse. Tatyana’s aunt rolled onto the highway and started to drive at the speed limit. We were late, thinking we might miss our flight, so she was trying to hurry us along, but then these two cops pulled up alongside. They’d been following us all along, we could see them the whole time, but now that we were moving at a good clip they kind of sidled up against the driver’s side of our car—like, drifting into our lane. We were going fifty, maybe sixty miles an hour, and they just came up and started boxing us in, cutting us off.
Tatyana’s aunt was freaking out—she didn’t know what to do.
Tatyana, she was freaking out, too, because our boys were still crying, and these two cops were trying to push us off the road.
I said, “Just slow down some. Let ’em win this one.”
So we slowed down some, and then we slowed down some more, but the more we slowed down, the slower they seemed to want us to go. Got us all the way down to twenty in a fifty-five zone—these two cops half in our lane, pushing us onto the shoulder, messing with us. Don’t know what they were trying to accomplish, except to set it up so we would miss our flight, and that’s just what happened. We were cutting it close as it was, and at twenty miles an hour there was no way—just, no way. So we pulled up by that little drop-off area they have at the airport, and I got out and looked at the monitors, saw our flight had already boarded and was fixing to take off, so I got back in the car and we drove back to the house.
Those two cops, they followed us most of the way, but then at some point they peeled off, and when they were finally gone from our rearview mirror, when the boys were finally quiet, Tatyana turned to me and said, “Ray Lewis, what in the world was that?”
• • •
I got back to the house and called my agents—Roosevelt Barnes and Eugene Parker. Told them what was going on, but they didn’t need to hear about this from me. It was already on the news—me being questioned in the case. They’d already been getting calls, already had a lawyer lined up to help me out.
I went to see the lawyer that afternoon, walked him through the whole story, same way I’m doing here. He’d been in touch with the police by this point, and he told me they wanted to come back and talk to me some more, have me make a statement. It didn’t feel to me like I had much choice in the matter, but I said that would be fine, long as he would be with me. You need to have your lawyer present, right? Especially with the way I’d been running my mouth over this. So I kind of filed that away, told myself I’d set aside that nonsense with those two cops, put this whole thing behind me.
My mom, she’d been trying to reach me. She’d heard about it, too. Wasn’t anything to it, but it was a big story. She was at the airport, headed to meet up with us in Hawaii—in fact, she was already on the plane when she finally reached me on the phone, while I was sitting with this lawyer.
She said, “Junior, what is all this business?”
I said, “Don’t worry none. Whatever happened, I wasn’t involved.”
She believed me, of course—but she believed the television, too. Her generation, you see something on the news, something in the newspaper, it must be the truth, so we went back and forth for a while—me telling her what she already knew, deep down.
Finally, she said, “We gonna be okay then?”
I said, “We gonna be okay.”
She said, “I will see you in Hawaii then?”
I said, “Tomorrow. I’ll be on a flight first thing in the morning with Tatyana and the boys.”
Already, we’d gotten ourselves booked on another flight. Wasn’t any reason to think we would have to miss out on this trip—we were all looking forward to it, and after everything that went down after I left the Cobalt, I was itching to get out of this strange hell.
Then, before I could finish with my mother, there was a knock on the door—the police, come to take my statement. But it wasn’t just one or two cops. Wasn’t three or four. No, sir—nine police officers came barreling into the house. Nine! It made no sense, such a show of force, just for me to make a statement. I’d watched a lot of television, seen a lot of cop shows, but I’d never seen anything like this.
The lead detective on the case—a man I’d never seen before—walked over to where I was sitting on the couch, talking on the phone. He said, “You need to put down the cell phone, Mr. Lewis.” His voice was cold
.
I put my hand up, my index finger out, to show him I would just be a minute. Just then, I had no reason to think this visit from the entire police force was anything other than what my lawyer had just led me to believe. They were here to take a statement. That’s all. I had my mother on the phone, and she was upset, confused about what was going on—and now with this new commotion, nine police officers barreling into the house, she heard all of that and was even more upset, even more confused, so of course I wanted to make sure she was calm.
She said, “What’s going on, Junior? Who are all those people?”
I started to answer her, but the lead detective stepped in closer and said, “You need to be off that phone, Mr. Lewis.” His tone was menacing, hateful—like I was the one out of line.
So I held up my hands, to show I meant no harm, no disrespect, but he kept coming—said, “Mr. Lewis, you are under arrest. You are being charged with the double murder of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar. I need you to put the phone down and come with me.”
Of course, I lost it. Of course, I went off—started yelling, fussing. This was not supposed to happen. My poor mother was still on the phone, and in the middle of all this yelling, all this fussing I put it back to my ear and said, “Mom, these folks are arresting me.”
I didn’t know what all she’d heard.
Tatyana came over and took the phone from me, and as she did these other officers just surrounded me. It was like a swarm. I was in shock, couldn’t understand what was going on, or why. I needed a moment for this new reality to set in. I just needed to breathe, was all. But these officers couldn’t wait, not even a moment, so they moved in, and as they did the lead detective said, “That’s how it’s gonna be, huh?”