Throughout his NFL career as a running back for the Baltimore Ravens and the controversy surrounding footage of him beating his then-fiancée unconscious in a hotel elevator, Ray Rice has spoken about how the loss of his father to a drive-by shooting when he was just over one year old played a part in shaping his life.
Rice's tragic upbringing, which he's admitted has been plagued by "intergenerational traumas," has gotten new attention now that Michael Foster, the man who killed the NFL star's father 38 years ago, has been arrested again, this time for gunning down his own niece.
Foster, 58, was ordered held without bail on Thursday for slaying 39-year-old Julia Anderson during a property dispute, cops said.
Monday's killing was hauntingly similar to Rice's father. Both of Foster's victims were shot. And, despite the nearly four-decade gap, the two killings occurred within a half-mile of each other.
"I have found out that he was a great guy, well known in the community. I think I'm living his life for him through other people," Rice told the Baltimore Sun about his father in a 2008 interview. "He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, shot in the back of the head. It was a tragedy, especially for my grandparents, because he was one of two children, the baby of the family."
Foster gunned Reed down on S. 14th Ave. near W. 3rd St. in Mount Vernon, as his victim walked home from work on Feb. 9, 1988, according to reports. Cops at the time said the shooting appeared drug related.
Reed, 19, was a supermarket stock clerk and a body builder, according to the Rockland/Westchester Journal News.
Foster was arrested about three years after killing Reed and charged with murder and weapon possession. He was just about to go to trial in 1991 when he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and criminal use of a firearm.
He served seven years and three months in prison before being paroled in 1999, state Department of Corrections records show. His parole ended in 2003.
"Sometimes you wonder what it would be like to have your real dad," Rice said in a 2010 article on the Baltimore Ravens website . "Just for a walk in the park or just recapping our lives. That's the part that makes me think."
Attempts to reach Rice regarding the new arrest were unsuccessful.
Rice's mother, Janet Rice, has told reporters the absence of his father forced Rice to become the man of the house at a young age. She raised Rice, and his three younger siblings on her own in a public housing complex, nicknamed 'The Hollow' in New Rochelle, NY.
Rice later found a father figure in his older cousin, Shaun Rice-Nichols, an up and coming rap artist known as S.U.P.E., who moved in with them after his mother died of brain cancer at 37 years old, according to reports.
But tragedy struck again when Rice-Nichols died in a car crash at 21 years old, alongside his fiancée in California on March 21, 1998. Rice was 11 years old.
But his death, along with his father's, were part of what motivated Rice to strive for greatness.
"When adversity struck it didn't deter me from being great," Ray said in the Baltimore Ravens article. "It fueled me. It fueled me to be a person that wanted to leave his mark."
When Rice was a Junior in high school and standout player on his school's football team, he vowed that he was "going to the league."
"'I've got to make the league,'" he told his mother. "'I'll be glad when I can tell you, 'You don't have to work no more.'"
Rice went on to become a star running back for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and later the Baltimore Ravens, starting in 2008.
The former NFL player was caught on video in February 2014 brutally beating his then-fiancée in an elevator of an Atlantic City hotel, knocking her unconscious. Other released video showed him dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of the elevator. The NFL briefly suspended Rice, who was charged with assault. The charges were ultimately dropped by the fiancée who he later married. The two have two children together.
Since the scandal, Rice has mostly kept a low-profile, but in May Rice shared a post on Facebook celebrating the completion of the degree he started at Rutgers University before he was drafted into the NFL.
"I want to acknowledge my father, Calvin Reed, who was tragically shot and killed when I was just 13 months old," Rice wrote. "I never got the chance to truly know him, but I carry his name, his blood, and his spirit with me every day. I'm sure he would be proud of the man I've continued to become and proud that I finished this journey."
Rice told the Star Ledger he fulfilled a promise he made to his father's parents, James and Amelia Reed, that he'd get his college degree.
"I got this Reed side of me that no one really knows about," Rice told the paper. "It's just beautiful to be able to do something that I felt like it was for them, but really, it's for all of us. It's for my kids, too."
"It's one of my biggest achievements outside of sports and being a father and a husband," he said about earning his degree. "And I think that it's (a reminder) that you gotta stick to your word. I made a promise, and I said, I gotta finish."
Rice told the Star Ledger he has faced what he called the, "intergenerational traumas" of his life to become a better man.
Prosecutors made mention of Reed's murder at Foster's arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court Thursday.
"This is the second person he has killed, Your Honor," Assistant District Attorney Burim Namani told Judge Cary Fischer.
Foster ambushed his niece just before midnight Monday, firing two shots at her as she stepped into her car outside the group home where she worked. The violent execution was sparked by a nasty real estate dispute the two were embroiled in.
Foster was ordered held without bail Thursday after pleading not guilty to murder, manslaughter and weapon possession.
Foster and Anderson lived in the family's two-story Mount Vernon home with Anderson's mother, police said. Foster was upset his niece had inherited the family home, which, according to online records, has an estimated value of $568,000.
The dispute led to Anderson's arrest last year after Foster accused her of forging his signature on a deed for the property, according to a Rockland/Westchester Journal News report. The charges against Anderson were dropped months later, according to the outlet.
Anderson then filed a pro se lawsuit against Westchester County alleging malicious prosecution. She claims in the suit that the district attorney brought charges against her "not through evidence or probable cause but through the unvetted statements of a known felon with a violent criminal history and a personal vendetta."
The lawsuit was pending at the time of her murder.
