On Tuesday, the attorney for LSU tackle La’el Collins said that his client would sit down and talk to Baton Rouge police as part of their investigation into the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend.
Collins has not been named as a suspect in the case and reportedly left Chicago ahead of the draft in order to facilitate that meeting with authorities. There was no contact with the police on Wednesday, however, and a lieutenant with the Baton Rouge Police Department told John Kryk of the Toronto Sun that as “of this morning, detectives working the case still have not heard from” Collins or his attorney.
Collins’s attorney said that he was “nowhere around” Brittany Mills at the time of her murder, but his pro career may be on hold until there’s some more certainty on where Collins fits into the investigation. There has been increasing talk in league circles that Collins neither draftable nor employable until/unless he is fully exonerated of any wrongdoing in the matter by law enforcement.
Should that hold and should exoneration happen at some point after Saturday, Collins would be in the unusual position of being a prospective early pick who is able to pick his team rather than have things left up to chance in the draft. That’s a total hypothetical at this point, but it might become Collins’s best-case scenario if the matter stretches past the weekend.