Vernon Forrest won the Marvin Kohn Good Guy Award in 2003 in a vote of members of the Boxing Writers Association of America, a richly deserved honor for a man who always was looking for ways to share his good fortune with others. "He came from the ‘hood and even though he became a world champion and a big success and had a lot of money, he never forgot where he came from,” Mitchell said. “He was a guy who always was looking for something to do for someone else. It was like the money was burning a hole in his pocket. He wanted to give it to the gyms or some charity or just someone he saw who needed it.
Forrest, 38, was shot and killed Saturday during a robbery, Atlanta police said. One of his trainers and closest friends, Charles Watson, told an Atlanta television station that Forrest stopped at a Mechanicsville, Ga., gas station to fix a problem with a tire when the incident occurred. He offered money to a man who helped him and was soon surrounded by several men, who somehow took his wallet, Watson told WXIA-TV. Watson told the station that Forrest scuffled with the men briefly in an apparent attempt to regain his wallet. One of the men jumped out of the car and shot him in the back of the head and then shot him six more times while he was on the ground.
It was a tragic end to a life filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
“Nobody who knew Vernon has ever said a bad word about him. The first day I met him in our program when he was 15 years old, he told me he wanted to buy his mother a house. He was able to do that, but he did so much more. He worked so hard and made himself a good boxer that he made his bouts boring. But what I’m going to remember about Vernon is that he wasn’t just a great athlete. He was a great man, a great citizen of this world. He left it a better place than he found it.”
