Corey Ballentine also has to deal with media critics who spout opinions despite having no knowledge of his situation
Giants defensive back Corey Ballentine runs a defensive drill during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday. Credit: Brad Penner
Though police made it clear early in their investigation that Corey Ballentine and his friend Dwane Simmons were victims of a crime who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were shot near the campus of Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, there were some who saw the incident as a poor reflection on the Giants. In particular, WFAN radio host Mike Francesa said it made the Giants look like a “laughingstock.”
“When you finish your draft and stress how you went out of your way to take the right kind of guys, guys that you want on the team, guys that are going to be great character guys and you stress that as strongly as the Giants did, it looks pretty bad when one of them gets shot on a Saturday night,” Francesa said (though he later walked back some of those remarks). “It does not look good. It’s just more of the same for the Giants, who just can’t get out of their own way, no matter what they say.”
Ballentine, who made his first public remarks on Sunday about the shooting, said he was offended by that characterization.
“Initially I was kind of upset because nobody was there and nobody knew what happened,” the 23-year-old cornerback said. “And at that point, I don’t think anybody really knew who I am or who I was. For somebody to say those types of things it kind of made me upset. But at the same time I don’t think I would be here playing for the Giants if I was a bad person. I think everybody knows that the NFL is pretty thorough with everything they do, so if I was doing anything bad, I think everyone would know about it.”
The Giants publicly vouched for Ballentine at the time and still do.
“I think the right people know that everything that happened was out of my control,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it at this point, so I’m just moving forward with it.”
Earlier in July, police in Ohio arrested Francisco Alejandro Mendez, 18, and charged him with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and five counts of aggravated battery in the April 28 attack on Ballentine and Simmons.
The arrest came two and a half months after the shooting.
“I was glad because a lot of people were looking for answers from me that I didn’t really have,” Ballentine said. “I’m glad that somebody else can take that away from me and give the family and everybody else a little bit of closure. It’s something that I couldn’t really provide because I don’t know all the details myself, I just happened to be there. That definitely brought a good feeling to me.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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