Deadly Destiny

Demetrius Dubose had a quick smile and a bright future, but while filling out a questionnaire for the 1990 Notre Dame media guide he gave a chilling response. Asked to finish the phrase, "When I'm 35, I want to be...," the sophomore linebacker wrote simply, "alive." DuBose became a Fighting Irish co-captain and went on to play four seasons with the Buccaneers, but he didn't get his wish. On July 24 he was killed during a fight with two San Diego policemen.

The cops say they tried to detain DuBose, 28, as a suspect in a burglary. Though cooperative at first, he resisted when the officers tried to handcuff him. The 217-pound DuBose tossed one officer into a planter and took both cops' martial arts batons, called nunchucks. Wielding the weapons, DuBose approached the officers. When he ignored their warnings to stop, they shot him three to five times in the chest.

DuBose had a temper—after being asked to leave a nightclub last year, he pulled a pipe from the ceiling and flooded the room—but friends and teammates remember him as a hard worker who earned a degree in government from Notre Dame in 3� years. While Chargers kicker John Carney, another Notre Dame alum, calls DuBose's death a tragic end, San Diego city councilman George Stevens thinks there may be more to the story. Stevens has launched an investigation of the shooting. The officers who shot DuBose reported that he appeared to be drunk or on drugs, but Stevens and others aren't fully convinced by the police report. Toxicology results won't be known until next week, and the police and DuBose's family will conduct separate autopsies.