The Chargers traded up 14 spots to draft former Oklahoma linebacker Kenneth Murray with the No. 23 overall selection. Not only were they getting an outstanding player, they were also getting a phenomenal individual with a unique life story.
The son of a pastor and a retired cop, Murray’s life changed in the fifth-grade, when his parents, Kenneth Sr. and Dianna, adopted three special-needs kids through his father’s church.
Nyia, who was 8 at the time, Leonard, who was 3, and James, a toddler, have the same disorder in which part of a chromosome is missing genetic material.
Today, Nyia is 18, Lennie is 14 and James is almost 10. Nyia knows the alphabet and can read at a second-grade level. Lennie and James can’t even talk.
“My siblings, they are my blood,” Murray said. “Even though they were adopted, they’re my blood and I’d do anything for them.
Life took a major turn in July of 2019. Murray was driving home from church only to discover a deaf woman collapsed on the sidewalk. The CPR training Murray learned as a counselor at the church community center would end up saving a life.
“Just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Coming home from church with my girlfriend, happened to just come by a situation that somebody just needed my help,” Murray said.
“Driving home from church, a car flashed, pretty much ran the red light in front of me and they stopped in the middle of the road and a lady gets out of the car and just runs immediately over to like the sidewalk area. So as I pull up a little bit more I could see on the sidewalk there was another lady, female laid out on the ground.
So I immediately parked my car in the middle of the street, get out and immediately rush over to the lady and see what was going on. And when I arrived on the scene she was bleeding from the head, completely unconscious, just laying on the ground. The other lady was her friend, she was screaming and yelling at her, trying to get her to wake back up.
So that’s when I just immediately started CPR. Started CPR, got between 70-80 pumps in and that’s when I finally got her revived, got her back to breathing. Then shortly after that the paramedics arrived.”
For anyone that was in that situation, they might’ve wanted the spotlight, but that wasn’t the case for Murray. He was going to keep it a secret and might have been able to if it wasn’t for a reporter from the Oklahoma student newspaper driving by.
“Two days later I happened to be chilling in the locker room and our media director, Mike Houck, comes up to me and he’s like, ‘hey, did you give a woman CPR a couple days ago?’
And I was like, ‘uuh, yeah.’ and so he was like, well, the kid with the school newspaper was driving by and happened to see a big human being that looked like you that was giving CPR to a woman.
I was just like, ‘yeah, that was me.’ It’s a unique situation, just a blessing to be in the right place at the right time,” Murray said.
Being in the right place at the right time describes Murray to-a-tee, whether it’s on the football field to stop a running back behind the line of scrimmage or being there to save a woman’s life.
“But this man’s intangibles, his presence when he walks into a room – he’s just a natural-born leader and I love that he’s passionate about this game. It just comes through in the interview process that I had with him,” coach Anthony Lynn said about Murray.