Peyton Manning sent Logan Brown's parents a handwritten letter and autographed picture this week to express his condolences for the loss of their son, the Indiana teenager who was killed by a drunk driver in March.
Brown, a 15-year-old sophomore football player at Reitz High School in Evansville, died when the vehicle he was riding in was involved in a head-on collision with a suspected drunken driver
traveling the wrong way, the Evansville Courier & Press reported.
Brown's relatives, who said that the Denver Broncos quarterback was Logan's favorite football player, said they were stunned when they received the mementos on Tuesday, what would
have been his 16th birthday, according to WFIE-TV.
"To take the time to send something back to a situation in Evansville, Indiana that he probably doesn't know anything about," Charles Brown, Logan's father, told WFIE-TV. "It's important to see that they're humans and for these other kids to see you never forget where you come from.”
Logan Brown's grandmother Gayle Ricketts told the television station that she initially wrote Manning to tell him about her grandson, but never expected him to respond the way he did.
"As a grandmother I felt like I should let Peyton know this young man idolized him and what he meant in his life," Ricketts said to WFIE-TV. "(The letter and photograph) blew me away. I called Charles when the letter came. I didn't even open it. I called Charles to come over. I said the Broncos answered me."
Ricketts said that her grandson was hooked on Manning from the first time he saw the record-setting quarterback play in Indianapolis when he was the signal-caller for the Colts, and then followed his success in Denver.
"When he was little we took him to a football game," Ricketts told WFIE-TV. "That's when he first really liked Peyton and then when Peyton moved to the Broncos, he kind of deserted the Colts . . . I know Logan is up there looking down. He's smiling. I think he will be happy."
Brown was the only fatality in the two-vehicle accident that also injured 15-year-old Hannah Miller and the 16-year-old driver, Kurt Osbourne, reported the Courier & Press. The driver of the second vehicle, 38-year-old Michael Neil Gann, was also injured but survived, according to the newspaper.
The Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office told the newspaper that Gann's blood-alcohol content measured more than 0.32 percent, roughly four times above the legal limit.
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