NFL Player 'Drunk' Before He Shot Girlfriend 9 Times

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he shot his girlfriend nine times and then killed himself in front of his coach and general manager, an autopsy released today showed. The Jackson County Medical Examiner report on Belcher, 25, raised new questions about whether police should have done more before the Dec. 1 murder-suicide. Officers found Belcher sleeping in his idling car about five hours earlier, but let him go inside a nearby apartment to sleep it off.

At the time of the autopsy, Belcher's BAC was 0.17, more than twice the limit of 0.08% for Missouri drivers, and it was likely higher when he shot girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, 22, at the couple's Kansas City home. A police report released previously said Belcher had gone out the night before with a woman he was dating on the side while Perkins attended a concert with her friends. Police who found Belcher sleeping in his Bentley outside the woman's apartment told him to turn off the ignition and he complied, the report said. The report added that officers didn't smell alcohol on Belcher, and that there were no signs of him being "violent or emotionally unstable." See more here. (More Jovan Belcher stories.)