Posted on 05/28/2013 10:01:27 PM PDT by rickmichaels
Former NFL quarterback Cullen Finnerty was found dead Tuesday night in northwestern Michigan after a solo fishing trip over the holiday long weekend.
"We were walking a good line," Scott Boyd, who was part of one search party that found the body, told the Detroit Free Press. "I squatted down. We had seen some trail. And a girl shouted. She walked right up on it. I thought, 'Oh no.'"
Finnerty, who briefly played for the Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos in 2007-08, had been missing since Sunday night, Lake County Sheriff Robert Hilts said. He confirmed the death at a news conference.
Around 100 current and former players and coaches from his alma mater, Grand Valley State, searched through the swampy woods northeast of Baldwin, Mich., Tuesday afternoon.
Hilts said the 30-year-old ran into the forest after having a "nervous episode" and hadn't been seen since.
"He phoned his wife and explained he was afraid," Hilts told USA Today. "He left his equipment and ran off into the woods."
Finnerty's wife and in-laws immediately drove to his location but all they found was his small pontoon boat.
"We found a fishing pole and that's all," Lake County Undersheriff Dennis Robinson said. "No waders and no fishing equipment."
Finnerty led Grand Valley State to an NCAA Division II championships in 2003, '04 and '06.
RIP. A real shame. It sounds like it’s still a mystery.
Them Upppers are touchy about their stills..
What he die of.. buckshot.. machete marks.. arrow... blunt trauma.. run into a tree full blast.. what?..
If he was democrat he might of died of stupidity..
Episode? Mental illness? Paranoia,
Well, we all die of something, so have a heart.
Sad. RIP.
The concussion syndromes these men suffer from can be very devastating. I hope with a thorough autopsy the family can get some of the answers they seek. It must’ve been horrible to have your last minutes of life spent in terror - whether real or imagined. God bless him.
Prayers for his wife, and family.
Any fuqra camps nearby?
They train on that stuff. Hunting/stalking.
Didn't happen in Yooper Country.
Baldwin is about 70 miles north of Grand Rapids. Even though it's in the Lower Peninsula, I guess you could call it "Northwest Michigan".
Good point. I hadn’t considered the possibility he actually COULD have been stalked by someone. I haven’t heard of hunting parties for humans in Michigan though - even with all the Muslims in Dearbornistan and other places like that.
Are there wolves in that part of Michigan, or bears, or anything like that he could have heard and made him freak out?
We did a correlation thing years ago with the fuqra hangouts and locations where people thought they had heard, or felt threatened, by something they thought was bigfoot.
Amazing what is in the google earth-hackers forum. Their search is lousy, though.
Sounds to me like he was afraid of the nervous attack or panic attack he was experiencing, otherwise he would’ve identified the threat if it were something other than his own feelings.
I wonder if the IRS was after him?
I wonder if he was a Tea Party member?
Could have had good reason to be afraid.
“Uppers” are what you take to make you wide awake. I think maybe meth is an Upper.
Yoopers, on the other hand, are people who live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Lake County is located next to Wexford County, where Cadillac, MI is. It’s about in the middle of the Lower Peninsula. That is where this young man was found. As a rule, we “Trolls” (Michiganders who live “under da bridge) don’t do stills. I think meth labs are more common.
Just thought you’d like to know the geography and terminology involved.
Kind of a weird post you wrote.
Going out into the wilderness on a pontoon boat doesn’t sound like something a man already experiencing anxiety attacks would do. Sounds to me as if his being “afraid” (and a former pro football player admitting that to his wife is noteworthy) was something that came upon him once there.
“It mustve been horrible to have your last minutes of life spent in terror - whether real or imagined.”
Too late to ask him now. Maybe how they found him was telling enough.
I think a Sasquatch ate your QB.
I’m curious as to what the autopsy they are supposed to do today will show. In another article (link below) it mentioned that when the body was found there were no apparent signs of injury. I wonder if he might have had an underlying physical ailment
(like a heart problem or something). Even just being dehydrated can cause delirium, paranoia, and can lead to a heart attack.
I just hope the coroner is able to provide answers for his wife, and for his baby who will someday want to know what happened...
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