Though police made it clear early in their investigation that Corey Ballentine and his friend Dwane Simmons were victims of a crime who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were shot near the campus of Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, there were some who saw the incident as a poor reflection on the Giants. In particular, WFAN radio host Mike Francesa said it made the Giants look like a “laughingstock.”
“When you finish your draft and stress how you went out of your way to take the right kind of guys, guys that you want on the team, guys that are going to be great character guys and you stress that as strongly as the Giants did, it looks pretty bad when one of them gets shot on a Saturday night,” Francesa said (though he later walked back some of those remarks).