Russell Wilson shares emotions on 'murdered' George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor

Tom Gatto

Russell Wilson shares emotions on 'murdered' George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor image

Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson showed Wednesday how much he has been affected by the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. 

"I don't want to talk about football. I think about the pain of George, I think about Ahmaud, I think about Breonna. I think about these people that have been hurt . . . and murdered, and it's just a lot of pain on my heart right now," a dour Wilson said on a media conference call (per Bob Condotta of The Seattle Times).

Floyd's death last week at the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, following the highly publicized shooting deaths of Arbery and Taylor, has ignited protests and riots across the country. Seattle has been one of the areas of violence. Wilson said he wished he could have joined the protesters there "who are getting brutally abused."

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"When you think about the idea of Black Lives Matter, they do matter, and the reality is that me, as a black person, people are getting murdered on the street, people are getting shot down and the understanding that it's not like that for every other race. It's like that in particular for the black community," Wilson said in video posted by Gregg Bell of The (Tacoma, Wash.) News-Tribune.

The peaceful protests against police brutality and racial injustice have brought Colin Kaepernick's action in 2016 back to the forefront. Wilson said that Kaepernick had the right idea when he was kneeling in protest before the national anthem while he was still playing for the 49ers. 

"He was trying symbolize the right thing and people may have taken that the wrong way, but I think that he was trying to do the right thing, the bottom line," Wilson said.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.