Corey Ballentine went straight from his NFL debut in Arlington, Texas to Topeka, Kansas Monday to testify in a preliminary hearing for Francisco Alejandro Mendez, an 18-year-old accused of shooting Ballentine and killing his friend and Washburn University teammate, Dwane Simmons.
During his testimony, as reported by the Topeka Capital-Journal, Ballentine recalled leaving a party with college teammates on April 28 around 12:30 a.m. and talking outside about their plans for the next day when he noticed a white four-door car without its lights on approaching them.
Ballentine, 23, testified that someone in the car asked the players if they smoked, to which they said “no.” Another person in the car asked for their names and one player responded, “Don’t worry about all that,” the paper reported.
The car moved up roughly 20 feet as Ballentine kept an eye on it, and then he began hearing gunshots.
“Initially, it was slow,” he reportedly said of the gunfire. “Then it started speeding up after I started running.”
The players all ran in different directions according to Ballentine, who said he knew he’d been shot but “kept running” toward a friend’s house. He tried calling Simmons, according to the paper, but the phone went unanswered. He then called teammate James Letcher Jr. and told him to help take him to the hospital, not yet aware Simmons had been killed.
Ballentine was shot in the right butt cheek and the bullet is still there. He told The Post two weeks ago that his injuries were worse than what people thought as the bullet traveled into his hip bone, which cracked and caused pain in both hips leaving him unable to walk. He couldn’t run for about a month.
Mendez was bound over for trial, according to the Capital-Journal, on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and seven counts of aggravated robbery stemming from incidents prior to the shooting.