LOS ANGELES _ An argument echoed through the tidy home perched on a rise in the Windsor Hills neighborhood a half-dozen miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Shouted threats gave way to screams. Then the thud of blows.
De'von Hall stood over his mother's blood-covered body on that April evening this year. One of the home's residents, Brandeis Eubanks, dialed 911.
"He hit her. He stomped her out," he told the dispatcher. "They got in a tussling match and next thing you know she was on the ground and he was stomping her out."
Alecia Benson lay on her back, unconscious and spitting blood. Her face was swollen, lips sliced open, head battered, nose broken and cut.
"Her son is still here and I don't want him to attack me," Eubanks said. "If you guys get here, you can apprehend him."
In recent months, Benson had taken in her only child. She didn't see another way to help him.
More than five years had passed since Hall's final day on an NFL roster. He wasn't a star, instead one of the anonymous hopefuls who fill out practice squads and 90-man training-camp rosters. But he managed to achieve what few do and forged a career in professional football.
Inside the two-story home, Hall, 29, dressed and loaded up his backpack.
"Help her," Eubanks told the dispatcher. "Help her. Please."
"You've got to get a clean dry cloth or towel," the dispatcher said, "and apply pressure to where the blood ... "
Eubanks interrupted.
"No, no, no," he said. "OK. Please come. Please come now."
As Eubanks pleaded with the dispatcher, Hall walked out of the home and down the middle of Secrest Drive.
Another man screamed and shouted in the background.
"Get off the phone and get an ambulance here!" he said.
The line went dead.
