Los Angeles Times

Derrick Thomas still chief in minds of Kansas City faithful as Super Bowl approaches

MIAMI - Derrick Thomas, perhaps the greatest defensive player in Kansas City Chiefs history, entered and left his world the same way.

In the arms of his mother.

"The whole thing is still sometimes a blur," said Edith Morgan, sitting in a downtown restaurant two miles north of Jackson Memorial Hospital, where her son died at 33. "Sometimes you have those moments when it's like yesterday."

Next Saturday - six days after Super Bowl LIV - will be the 20th anniversary of Thomas' death. The All-Pro linebacker, who had been paralyzed from the chest down as the result of a car accident 16 days earlier, suffered from cardiorespiratory arrest while being transferred from his bed to a wheelchair on his way to a therapy session.

"We had gotten him

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