Police say Woman found Dead with Mcnair Purchased gun 3 days earlier

Published on July 6, 2009 by     

Steve McNair’s 20-year-old girlfriend bought a gun a couple of days before she was found dead alongside the slain former NFL quarterback, her relative said Monday.

Farzin Abdi said police told him about the gun purchase by his aunt, Sahel Kazemi, who was raised with him like a sister. Kazemi and McNair were found dead Saturday in a Nashville condominium leased by the former Titans star.

Abdi said police told him they are almost sure that Kazemi was the shooter, but the 27-year-old nephew said he doesn’t believe she would do it. Abdi didn’t know what day of the week the gun was purchased or what type of gun it was.

“There was no way she was depressed and wanting to do this,” he said. “She was so happy. … She just had it made, you know, (with) this guy taking care of everything.”

Nashville police didn’t immediately have a response to Abdi’s comments.

Abdi said Kazemi believed McNair was divorcing his wife and she was preparing to sell her furniture to move in with him. Nashville courts had no record of a McNair divorce case, but a 14,000-square-foot home he owned in Nashville is on the market for $3 million.

Mechelle McNair has been described as very distraught about her husband’s death and hasn’t commented on it.

Publicly, McNair was a happily married man and proud father of four sons who split his time between his farm in Mississippi and a home in Nashville, where celebrities are cherished, not hassled. However, his death thrust a darker side of his private life into the spotlight.

“People have certain things that they do in life,” said McNair’s longtime friend, Robert Gaddy, who called 911. “We don’t need to look on the situation at this time, (but) on the fact we just lost a great member of society.”

Even McNair’s longtime agent said he didn’t know about the former quarterback’s relationship with Kazemi.

“As good as he was on the football field, that couldn’t touch the person,” agent Bus Cook said Sunday, still shaken by McNair’s death. “I mean it just couldn’t.”

Hints of a problem with alcohol surfaced in May 2003 when a Nashville police officer pulled McNair over on suspicion of drunk driving. Police said the quarterback’s blood-alcohol content was 0.18 percent — well over Tennessee’s legal limit. He also was charged with having a 9mm weapon with him, but all the charges were later dropped.

McNair was charged with drunken driving in 2007 because he let his brother-in-law drive his pickup truck. Those charges were later dropped when the DUI charge against the brother-in-law was reduced to reckless driving.

And McNair could have been charged again Thursday night when the same officer who arrested him in 2003 stopped a 2007 Cadillac Escalade driven by Kazemi and registered to both her and McNair. Kazemi was arrested on a DUI charge, and he was allowed to leave in a taxi.

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