Youth coach says ‘I’m blessed’ after being shot 4 times by parent angry child isn’t starting

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, October 20, 2023

A volunteer youth football coach who was shot four times in front of his recreational team of 9- and 10-year-olds in St. Louis, Missouri, by a parent angry that his son was not one of the starting players says he is "blessed" to have survived the attack.

"I am a miracle. I beat the odds," the coach, Shaquille Latimore, 30, told KSDK.

"A bullet hit me under my left arm, on my left forearm, my leg, and one went through my lower back and out my liver. All of the bullets went through me," he recalled of the Oct. 10 attack by the parent police have identified as 43-year-old Daryl Clemmons. 

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"I was hit four times and grazed once. I still have bullet fragments in my body, I can still feel it, but by the grace of God, man, I'm blessed, and I'm still here," he added.

At the time of the attack, Latimore, a former football player at Vashon High School, volunteered as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator for a city recreational league team called the St. Louis BadBoyz. The team is coached by his cousin, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Latimore told the publication that Clemmons, now in police custody on charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action, had previously coached the team. He said when he joined the team as a coach, Clemmons would criticize his work.

"After every game, he would try to critique me," Latimore told The Post-Dispatch.

The relationship between the two men grew especially testy and remained tense until it erupted with the shooting.

Latimore, who is a married father of two daughters and three sons, said he was working with the team in Sherman Park in the 1500 block of North Kingshighway Boulevard when he noticed Clemmons had his back turned and kept reaching into a pocket of his sweatsuit before he began shooting.

"I didn't see his gun until it was already too late," Latimore recalled. "I ran, and he shot me in the back. I fell, and he shot me a couple more times."

Latimore said Clemmons stood over him and taunted him after the shooting.

"After he shot me, he was like ... 'I told you I was going to pop your [expletive],'" he said.

He said other adults in the community "shielded" him from further attack from Clemmons, who ran off before later surrendering to police.

The day after the shooting, the coach's mother, SeMiko Latimore, shared a photo of her son on Facebook in a hospital bed getting treatment for his wounds.

"Hey y'all, this is what a fighter looks like!!!! He's in a lot of pain, but he's HERE TO TELL HIS OWN STORY!!!!! I cant explain the joy I hv to hold my baby!!!!!! #prayers4CoachShaq," she wrote.

SeMiko Latimore was especially grateful that her son survived the shooting because she lost another son, Antonio Green, 24, in April 2021 to gun violence. Green was shot to death in the Spanish Lake area of north St. Louis County.

Latimore told KSDK that he believes Clemmons should face more charges because "he had no remorse whatsoever."

"I really believe he should face more charges," he said.

As a result of the shooting, the City of St. Louis Recreation Division has suspended the St. Louis BadBoyz from the league.

"After a series of incidents perpetrated by adults which culminated in Tuesday's shooting, the Recreation Division decided to suspend the team's participation in the CityRec Legends Football League," the city said in a statement cited by The Post-Dispatch. "League rules are in place to ensure the protection of our youth participants, ages 5 to 13, and we will continue to uphold the rules to ensure this football season is safe and successful."

Reacting to the report of Latimore's shooting, Steven McBride, CEO and founder of South Florida Sports Academy, said attacks like this made him move on from youth football.

"The reason I moved on from youth football. I didn't want somebody to kill me cause their kid sucks," McBride wrote in a post on Facebook Thursday, citing the report of the shooting. "The moms just want to know what her son needs to work on. But them daddies who was not a stud when they played, will kill a coach that knows the kid isn't a stud either."

The National Association of Sports Officials conducted a recent survey of some 36,000 sports officials, with 69% of respondents saying sportsmanship at games is getting worse.  

Some 50% of the officials also said they have felt unsafe while doing their jobs, and they say parents of athletes are the biggest offenders.

When asked if officials in his state sometimes feel unsafe, Jack Lally, a longtime assignor and referee for youth and high school lacrosse and ice hockey in New Jersey, told USA TODAY Sports it is a concern.

"Unequivocally, yes," Lally said. "You're leaving the arena, or you're leaving the field, and you're on your own and you're going to your car and officials have been approached, officials have been threatened. There have been several issues with that and it's a very serious ongoing issue that needs to be addressed."

This bad behavior from unruly parents has also been driving away referees from youth sports nationwide.

An estimated 50,000 high school referees — about 20% — quit from 2018 to 2021, Dana Pappas, the director of officiating services for the National Federation of State High School Sports, told The New York Times.

New Hampshire reportedly lost a quarter of its hockey referees between 2018 and 2022. Meanwhile, the Public School Athletic League in New York City reported in 2022 that it was short about 90 officials in Brooklyn.

"I think we've lost some decorum in society in general, and I think that's carried over into the interscholastic arena," Todd Nelson, assistant director of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, told USA Today. "I think people feel because they paid for admission into a game or because their son or daughter is playing in the game, that they have the ability to say what they want and there should be no consequences to it."