Back to the New York Giants Newsfeed

Giants rookie is trying to cope with best friend’s murder

There is never a day and probably never an hour that Giants rookie defensive back Corey Ballentine doesn’t think about his best friend, Dwane Simmons.

“I think about it every day obviously because it’s somebody that was in my life every day and it’s hard to fill that gap,” Ballentine said Sunday at the Giants training facility in East Rutherford, N.J. “I haven’t filled it yet. Like I said, I’m trying to move forward.”

Moving forward means trying to cope with what should have been the best day of his young life turning into the worst. It means trying to deal with how hours after being drafted in the sixth round by the Giants in April, Ballentine and Simmons were shot while leaving a party about four blocks from the campus of Washburn University in Topeka, Kan.