Seau suicide turns up focus on brain injuries

Dave Duerson made it easy to understand why he was ending his tortured life.

Before the former Chicago Bears star fired a bullet into his chest last year, he left word with his family to have his brain examined for damage he believed was caused by repeated blows to the head from his hell-bent style on the football field.

Junior Seau was an even bigger star in the NFL, and yet he ended his life Wednesday in much the same way as Duerson and former Atlanta Falcons safety Ray Easterling: self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Now friends wonder if the San Diego icon hoped his death might leave a greater legacy than any of his amazing feats on the gridiron.

Former player Kyle Turley, who is dealing with his own mental issues and has already agreed to donate his brain for research after his death, has no doubt that Seau wanted to make sure his brain could be studied for the telltale signs of football-related trauma. That's why, Turley believes, his friend shot himself in the chest instead of the head.

"Knowing Junior as I did, he was a very strong kid," Turley told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"Somewhere, the wires got crossed and he unfortunately decided to end his life. But in his last moment — and I will without a doubt believe this until the day I die — Junior Seau ended his life in a valiant way."

Seau's death was ruled a suicide by the San Diego County medical examiner's office after an autopsy Thursday. Officials were awaiting a decision by the family on whether to turn over Seau's brain to unidentified outside researchers for study. A more in-depth investigative report could take up to 90 days.

Seau, 43, was one of the NFL's most rugged players, a fierce-hitting linebacker selected for the Pro Bowl a dozen years in a row. He played for three teams over two decades, far longer than the average football career, before finally retiring for good at age 40.

Three years later, he decided to end his life. There were signs of trouble away from the field: a divorce, a domestic violence charge involving his girlfriend, though he was never formally charged.

Hours before the domestic violence arrest, his car plunged over a 100-foot cliff in what some speculated was an attempt to kill himself. Seau survived with only minor injuries and insisted that he had simply fallen asleep at the wheel.

Seau never indicated publicly he was having trouble with life after the NFL because of all those blows to the head, and his family said he seemed happy.

That's a far cry from Easterling, who died last month at age 62. He suffered from dementia and led a lawsuit filed by a number of prominent retired players, claiming the league didn't do enough to deal with concussion-related injuries.

Notably, Seau didn't join that lawsuit. Also, it's not known if he wanted Boston University, which has been conducting research into football-related head trauma, to study his brain for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative disease that can be caused by multiple concussions and only detected after death.

The school said in a statement it was "saddened by the tragic death of Junior Seau," but declined to discuss his case without family approval.

Thomas Demetrio, an attorney for the Duerson family, said it would be "pure speculation" to say that Seau had the same motivation for ending his life as the former Bears safety.

"Dave made it easy," Demetrio said. "He left notes. He sent texts to his family letting them know he wanted his brain studied. I don't know that we have a good answer for why Junior did it."