Texans' Tank Dell says gunshot wound resulted from 'wrong place, wrong time' situation

Earlier this offseason, Houston Texans wide receiver Tank Dell suffered a minor leg injury during a shooting in Sanford, Florida. Dell was an innocent bystander during the incident, in which a 16-year-old was arrested after shooting 10 people.

Texans owner Cal McNair said shortly after the shooting that Dell make a full recoveryand a few weeks later Dell was already back develop and navigate itineraries, looking a lot like the player he did during his rookie season. Now, Dell has spoken out about the incident itself.

“First of all, I’m lucky,” Dell said during an appearance on teammate CJ Stroud’s “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast. “For me, it was just the wrong place, wrong time. I went back to see my mom. I wasn't even planning on going back and going to the little pool party or something, but my boys found out I was at home, so they hit me.

“They told me, 'Stop by the party.' They told me there would be security checks, people would be checked at the door, stuff like that, so I'm like, okay, cool, it's a good atmosphere, and there's had a lot of people I knew in there, so that was cool. Then this (expletive) came out of nowhere.

At the time of the shooting, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said the incident began with a verbal altercation and escalated from there, and the shooter was apprehended by a security guard working at the scene , while the victims, including Dell, suffered no suffering. -life-threatening injuries. The bullet that hit Dell passed cleanly through his leg and out the other side.

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

Stroud, meanwhile, said the incident made him think about the things he does when he returns home during the offseason.

“It was a good moment for me to realize that I couldn't go home and do the same things that I was doing too,” Stroud said. “Because sometimes when I go home, that's where I feel comfortable: going to pool parties or bowling or, like, skating rinks or house parties. That are the people I grew up with. I didn't change. Just because I got a little money, for this moment to happen so quickly, it was an eye-opening experience.