Some football stars (cough, cough, Kaepernick) donate money to groups that hate emergency responders.
Then there’s this guy.
Houston Texas star J.J. Watt donated $10,000 to the family of a Wisconsin firefighter who was shot and killed on Wednesday after responding to a medical call.
Watt’s father is a retired firefighter. He made the donation through a GoFundMe page that was set up for Appleton firefighter Mitchell Lundgaard.
The shooting on Wednesday also left a police officer and a bystander wounded. The gunman was killed, according to police.
Watt’s donation brought the GoFundMe campaign to more than $80,000 – all of which will go to support the firefighter’s wife and three kids. Lundgaard had served on the Appleton fire department for 14 years.
Watt is no stranger to supporting others.
His non-profit, the J.J. Watt Foundation, raised $41.6 million to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey in 2018. The money was sent to All Hands and Hearts, Americares, Boys & Girls Clubs, Baker Ripley, Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children and SBP.
Prior to Texas, Watt was a Wisconsin standout. That might explain in part why he also gave $10,000 to the family of a fire captain who was killed in an explosion in Sun Prairie last summer.
It’s refreshing to see football players actually support emergency responders… unlike his counterpart, former NFL quarterback and social justice warrior Colin Kaepernick.
Kaepernick, the pig-sock wearing, anti-police legend who now struggles finding employment previously made a $25,000 donation to a group honoring Joanne Chesimard. Chesimard was a member of the Black Liberation Army who goes by the name Assata Shakur, and was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.
Trooper Werner Foerster was shot and killed with his own service weapon. It happened after Foerster backed up another trooper who had stopped a vehicle containing two men and a woman on the New Jersey Turnpike.
The two started struggling with the troopers and disarmed Trooper Foerster. One of the two then opened fire with that gun, killing Trooper Foerster and wounding the other trooper. Despite having been shot, the other trooper was able to return fire and kill the subject.
Chesimard was sentenced to life in prison, but in 1979 broke out of prison. fled to Cuba, where she now lives as a fugitive from justice.
Kaepernick made the donation to the Chicago-based organization Assata’s Daughters. It was part of his pledge to “donate $100,000 a month for 10 months to ‘organizations working in oppressed communities'”.
He insisted that of that donation, part of it be given to Cop Watch, which is a group that encourages people to follow and videotape police officers doing their jobs.
The Officer Down Memorial Page reports that the Black Liberation Army was responsible for the murders of more than 10 police officers around the country.
Chesimard remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.