Former NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown was back in the news last week, though not for any good reason.
The Washington Post’s David Ovalle reported last week that Miami-Dade County authorities were looking to arrest Brown on an attempted murder charge stemming from a shooting at a celebrity boxing event in May. The warrant says that Brown must post a $10,000 bond and be placed on house arrest until trial if apprehended.
Police detectives reportedly obtained footage of what appears to show Brown punching a man, then taking a security officer’s gun and running back toward that same man. Per the police warrant, cellphone video includes two gunshots as Brown approached him.
Several patrons in the parking lot also told officers that Brown was the shooter, per the warrant. Investigators found two shell casings and an empty gun holster at the scene.
Brown spoke with officers afterward and was later released. He took to social media to say he had been “jumped” and people were trying to steal his jewelry.
Following the announcement that there was a warrant for his arrest, Brown spent much of the weekend posting to social media from a foreign country, though authorities didn’t specify which one. On Friday, he posted on social media that he was in the Middle East. On Saturday, he claimed he was in London.
Among his recent social media posts were several that blamed the media for his predicament.
Sunday afternoon, Brown shared an image with an anti-media quote from Malcolm X. “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth,” it reads. “They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
He followed that up with a screenshot of Chat GPT saying that he has been racially profiled and adding that “they control the media,” though it’s unclear who he is referring to.
Brown later followed that up with a post about Caleb Williams in which he referred to the Chicago Bears quarterback with the F-slur.
The former NFL standout was considered one of the top receivers of his generation, but his playing career flamed out amid ongoing erratic behavior and inflammatory social media posts. In the 2021 capper to his NFL career, Brown ripped off his shoulder pads, helmet, and gloves and walked shirtless into the locker room in the middle of a game while waving to the crowd.
As Ovalle noted in his report, this latest incident is far from the only transgression involving Brown since the end of his NFL career.
“Since his unofficial retirement from football, Brown has faced continued allegations of misconduct,” he wrote. “He allegedly exposed himself to a woman at hotel in Dubai in 2022. Police have issued arrest warrants for him for alleged domestic violence and failure to pay child support. In May 2024, he reportedly filed for bankruptcy. In online postings, Brown has frequently attributed his unpredictability to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the brain damage associated with football’s repeated blows to the head.”