It’s not even been a week since the tragic apparent suicide of Cowboys end Marshawn Kneeland, and still, the news is raw for most around the organization. It’s even more painful, of course, for those who were closest to Kneeland, especially his longtime girlfriend, Catalina Marcena, who has been his partner since Kneeland was a collegiate player at Western Michigan.
It was Marcena who alerted police back on November 5 that Kneeland was armed and could be a danger to himself, warning of his history of mental illness. In the days since, Marcena has remained out of the spotlight, but she did finally speak this week, at first telling the Daily Mail, “It’s too much.”
She went on: “I’m grieving hard right now. It will be a long time before I’ll feel ready to talk at any length. We’re still in the early stages of everything. We are working on the funeral arrangements. I don’t know where it’s going to be yet.”
Catalina Marcena Left a Message on Facebook
Marcena, who founded a clothing line called, SZN Stitches, posted to Facebook this week, writing, “my sweet baby, words could never express how broken I feel, you’re my everything. I’ll love you forever my beautiful angel.”
Kneeland was just 24 when he died. Marcena is 22.
FacebookCowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland and girlfriend Catalina Marcena, from her Facebook post.
Marshawn Kneeland’s Mother Died Just before Cowboys Drafted Him
Kneeland’s death came 20 months after the death of his mother, Wendy.
Back on February 18, 2024, just days before the start of the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, where Kneeland would solidify his professional future after his career at Western Michigan, Wendy, died suddenly of an undisclosed illness. Kneeland headed into the Combine with a heavy heart, of course, but did not go public about his mother’s death.
He said at the time, “A lot of people don’t know because I really don’t talk about it too much … It was tough, it still is, but I know at the end of the day the thing that gets me through it is she spent all her life trying to get me to go here and supported me as much as she could to get me to the NFL.”
Cowboys ‘Devastated’ by Loss
Around the NFL this week, there were moments of silence held for Kneeland as the Cowboys were idle in their bye week. The Cowboys are returning to practice, and trying to return to business as usual, as much as possible, in preparation for Monday’s game against the Raiders.
Team owner Jerry Jones first addressed Kneeland’s death publicly in a radio interview in Dallas this week, saying he was, “devastated.”
“I think we all have unfettered feelings about the people we love, people we work with, and this is just a time when you acknowledge that there’s no answers,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas. “It makes you want to live life to the fullest. It makes you want to look for the very best in what we have for each other. And in some way make sense out of these times in terms of what they can mean from helping those that are here on Earth right now.
“All of those things are very natural, come to mind, but his death is such a national awareness thing that it takes on some of that light when we think about how we go forward.”
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Girlfriend of Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland Breaks Silence After Tragedy appeared first on Heavy Sports.