Colt Brennan, the former Hawaii quarterback who died Tuesday, was released from a California detox facility at its capacity without his family’s knowledge, his father told the Associated Press.
“They released him out on the street and either he made a call or he got Uber or something,” Terry Brennan said. “And now this is what we’re dealing with.”
Terry took his 37-year-old son to a hospital emergency room Sunday after he had been drinking, but Colt was released. He was unconscious when he returned to the hospital, where he later died surrounded by family members, according to the report.
“I could tell he was not well and needed help,” Terry Brennan said.
Colt Brennan finished third in the 2007 Heisman Trophy vote and ranks ninth in NCAA history in passing yards. He was drafted by Washington in 2008, but never appeared in an NFL game over two seasons and returned to the islands where he was a college football star.
The emotional and physical pain of a car crash that caused head, rib and collarbone injuries in 2010 followed Brennan in later years, according to the report. He was arrested twice while allegedly heavily intoxicated last year — once for disorderly conduct after an altercation with his roommate and another time for trespassing, causing a disturbance and refusing to leave at a hotel.
Brennan had two DUIs, in 2019 and 2013, according to the report.
“He just spent one too many times on the dark side of life,” Terry Brennan said of his son, “and it caught up with him.”
The younger Brennan, who walked with a cane and wore a leg brace, went to California earlier this year to seek help for his health, including blood clots in his legs, according to his father.
A police investigation is underway, according to his father, and the family is hopeful to get some answers from toxicology results and an autopsy.
It is not yet known if Brennan, who suffered multiple concussions during his football career and experienced head trauma in the car accident, is another football player tragically affected by CTE or another degenerative brain condition.
“His sisters made sure he had the Bob Marley music going by his side,” Terry Brennan said of his son’s final moments. “They had a lei around his chest.”