[imagesource: AFP via Getty Images]
Back in September 1965, the chairman of Nike’s Jordan brand, Larry Miller (above), shot and killed a teenager when he was 16.
Miller, who is now 72, has just publicly admitted to the murder for the first time in 56 years.
Edward White was 18 at the time and supposedly part of the rival gang who stabbed one of Miller’s friends to death earlier that month.
On September 30, Miller, who was a part of the Cedar Avenue gang, had gone out looking for revenge on the 53rd and Pine Streets rival gang.
Miller and his friends were all in a “haze” that night after drinking, and Miller wasn’t even sure that White was a part of the rival gang when they came across him, reported The Independent.
But Miller shot anyway, leaving a bullet in White’s chest.
The confession in Sports Illustrated comes ahead of the release of Miller’s memoir about the ordeal, Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom.
Miller joined the gang when he was 13 and quickly became “just a straight-up gangbanger, thug” by 16.
After the murder, he served four and a half years in a young offenders’ institution, where he tried to upskill and do better.
After prison, he climbed the corporate ladder, becoming the president of the Portland Trail Blazers’ NBA team before rising up the ranks at Nike, where he is now a chairman.
All that time, he had kept the murder a secret, hiding his criminal past from friends and colleagues while carrying the guilt and shame alone, reported Business Insider:
“If I could go back and undo it, I would absolutely do that,” Mr Miller said.
“I can’t. So all I can do is try to do what I can to help other people and try to maybe prevent this from happening to someone else.”
Miller has been somewhat praised for speaking out, motivating at-risk youth and prisoners and trying to discourage them from violence:
Nike CEO John Donohoe told Sports Illustrated: “Larry Miller has played an influential role in Nike history and is a beloved member of the Nike family.
“I hope his experience can create a healthy discourse around criminal justice reform, by helping remove the stigma that holds people and communities back,” Donohoe said.
However, the White family feel completely blindsided by the confession and haven’t heard a single peep from Miller since the fatal day.
To make things worse, Miller didn’t even use his victim’s real name in the book, referring to White instead as “another Black boy”:
Family members said they want Mr White’s name to be added to the final version and some sort of reparations for his death such as a formal apology or meeting, a scholarship set up under his name or financial compensation to the victim’s children from the book’s profits.
“You know his name, give him that respect, especially since you took his life,” Mr White’s great-niece Mariah Green told the New York Times.
White left behind his soon-to-be wife, infant son, and a daughter who had not been born yet at the time of his death.
The family said that the experience left them with a great deal of trauma, adding that it “changed the entire pattern of [his baby mama’s] life”.
Hopefully, Miller can do right by them now.
[sources:businessinsider&independent]
