Texans’ Tank Dell describes shooting incident as ‘wrong place, wrong time’

Houston Texans wide receiver Tank Dell called the circumstances around being shot in the leg in late April at a Florida bar “wrong place, wrong time” in an interview on the “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast.

“First off, I’m blessed,” Dell said via the podcast via Yahoo!. “To me, it was just wrong place, wrong time. I went back to see my mom. I wasn’t even planning to go back and go to the little pool party or whatever, but my boys found out I was home, so they hit me up.

“They was like, ‘Pull up to the party.’ They told me there was going to be security, people getting checked at the door, stuff like that, so I’m like, all right, cool. It’s a good vibe, and there were a lot of people that I knew in there, so it was cool. Then that (expletive) just popped off out of nowhere. It just went south out of nowhere.”

A 16-year-old was arrested in connection to the shooting Sunday and booked into a juvenile detention center. He was charged with attempted homicide, firing a weapon on public property, using/displaying a firearm during a felony and possession of a firearm by a minor.

The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said that the incident began as a verbal altercation that escalated and led to the gunfire. A security officer at Cabana Live successfully apprehended the 16-year-old shooter. None of the 10 people hospitalized sustained life-threatening injuries, per police.

“I thought I removed myself from the situation, like when you see on the video when I ran across.” Dell said. “But I put myself in the middle of two people. It just went crazy.”

Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, also a guest on the podcast, said he took the shooting as a learning experience for himself.

“It was a good moment for me to realize, like, I can’t go home and do the same things I was doing, too,” Stroud said. “‘Cause sometimes when I go home, that’s where I’m comfortable at — going to the pool parties, going to the bowling alleys or, like, the skating rinks or to the house parties.

“This is the people I grew up with. I ain’t changed. Just because I got a little bit of money. For that moment to happen that quick, it was an eye-opening experience.”

Dell, 24, was a third-round draft pick by Houston in 2023. He had 47 catches for 709 yards and seven touchdowns through 11 games last season and was a go-to target for Stroud during multiple of the team’s memorable late-game comebacks.

The Texans placed Dell on the injured reserve list after he fractured his fibula against the Denver Broncos on Dec. 3. He has participated in their offseason conditioning program this spring.

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