The 911 tapes of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry were released to the public recently. Henry was killed in an incident involving his fiance on Thursday morning. The first tape has an unidentified woman calmly telling the dispatcher that she could see "a black man on it with no shirt on, and he's got his arm in a cast and black pants on..... He's beating on the back of this truck window... I don't know if he's trying to break in or something. It just looks crazy. It's a girl driving it."

The tapes feature a second 911 call from a male who is telling the dispatcher that there is a black male lying in the street with several people around him and that he is "definitely unconscious," with people "taking his pulse."

Henry died later at the hospital. He was 26 years old. The incident began when his fiance, Loleini Tonga, got in to a pickup truck and drove away from the residence. Henry climbed in to the bed of the truck. The rest of the details are being uncovered in a police investigation.

"He was doing everything right, he was doing everything right," fellow receiver Chad Ochocinco said. "My grandma always says you never question the man upstairs on decisions he makes...and He never makes a mistake, but ... I don't see how Chris was supposed to go already, especially when he was on the right path ... Other than that, he's going to missed. That's it."

Henry was recovering from a troubled past which included several brushes with the law. A judge even described him as a "one man crime wave." But his teammates and others were seeing evidence that Henry was starting to mature and make better decisions in his life.

"Chris was a guy that I believe -- and our team believes -- was heavily misunderstood," said Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer. "There was a lot of speculation about who he was, but the only guys that knew Chris and knew how good of a heart he had, how kind he was, how gentle he was, how soft of a heart he had, were the guys in our locker room, the guys who were close to him, his family."


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.