Youth Football Coach Gunned Down In Front Of Team After Practice

Cincinnati, OH – A popular youth football coach was gunned down in front of his football team after practice in Cincinnati on Tuesday night.

Police said the incident occurred at about 8 p.m. on Oct. 18 in front of the College Hill Recreation Facility in the 1700 block of Larch Avenue, the New York Post reported.

Authorities said that the coach of the Trojan Black team, 37-year-old Jermaine Knox, was with another man – later identified as Joel Johnson Jr. – in front of the rec center when a third man approached them and started shooting.

Knox collapsed to the ground and died as his football players watched, the New York Post reported.

He was pronounced dead at the scene, WLWT reported.

Johnson was shot in the leg.

He was transported to the hospital for treatment and later released, the New York Post reported.

None of the football players were wounded during the shooting.

Police said it wasn’t immediately clear what the motive was behind the shooting and whether Knox was the intended target, the New York Post reported.

The Trojan Black youth football team is ranked as one of the top programs in the state.

“He was a great coach,” April Anderson told WLWT. “It was a great atmosphere. He was a great impact.”

Police are investigating the murder but said they do not yet have a suspect and have been given very little information to go on, the New York Post reported.

Officials asked that community members with any information on the incident contact police to help.

Neighbor Al Gray, who lives across the street from the park where the football field is located, told WXIX he heard the gunfire outside his home that night.

Gray said that first he heard people arguing and that prompted him to look out his window.

“I saw the car that was surrounded here pull out from the lot down there at the rec center and pull up here to the stop sign,” he explained. “The guy got out of the car on his phone and stumbled over there and died.”

Community activist Mitchell Morris said the crime was doubly brutal because it had been conducted in front of children, WXIX reported.

Morris said a community park should be a safe space rather than a killing field.

“We got babies that are being victims now, just the mental part of it,” he said. “When things like that happen, you think about the kids, so we just got to wrap our arms around them and the parents and people in the neighborhood and let them know this gone be all right.”

The shooting remains under investigation, WXIX reported.