A week after the passing of Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland, his girlfriend, who is pregnant with their baby, shared a heartfelt tribute to the late NFL star.
“My sweet baby, words could never express how broken I feel, you’re my everything,” Catalina Mancera wrote in a Nov. 10 Facebook post. “I’ll love you forever my beautiful angel.
The Dallas Cowboys’ head coach Brian Schottenheimer confirmed in a Nov. 12 press conference that Mancera, 22, is expecting Kneeland’s baby, noting that the NFL team had set up a fund to help her with expenses.
“We want to make sure she is taken care of and the baby is taken care of for the rest of their lives—it’s very important to our guys and to us,” Schottenheimer emphasized. “The organization has been amazing, we’ve started the Marshawn Kneeland Memorial Fund where we can all give and support Catalina.”
Kneeland, 24, died on November 5 from what authorities described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a vehicle crash and police pursuit near Frisco, Texas. Officials said that in the hours before the tragedy, Mancera reached out to police with concerns that he had a firearm and had made threats.
In her first interview since his death, Mancera told the Daily Mail she is still working through her grief. “I’m grieving hard right now. It will be a long time before I’ll feel ready to talk at any length,” she said. “We’re still in the early stages of everything. We are working on the funeral arrangements. I don’t know where it’s going to be yet.”