Every day, Pam Foster wonders why her husband, a former player for the New Orleans Saints who is now a prosperous businessman, ended up dead in the backseat of a police SUV two days after his arrest in rural Alabama.

Glenn Foster Jr. passed away about three months ago, and his bereaved family has not heard anything from the authorities in Pickens County, Alabama, where Foster was arrested midway through his business trip from New Orleans to Atlanta.

The official autopsy results are unknown. No reports of incidents. When Foster passed away, the sheriff’s office that was transporting him offered no explanation.

Pamela Foster told ESPN, “Every day, you want to make a story in your head, but nothing adds up.” Thus, it is really challenging. When you are attempting to piece together a puzzle and the pieces are simply missing because there is no transparency, it is really difficult to grieve.”

Foster was 6-foot-4 and 270 pounds, but everyone who met him said he had huge goals, a large heart, and a big personality to go along with it. The former defensive end for the Saints was raised in an entrepreneurial, middle-class family that strived for success. He only played two seasons of professional football before an injury ended his career. However, Foster used the setback as a launching pad to fulfill a longstanding ambition of his own business.

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All that Alabama authorities have disclosed is that on December 6, while being driven from the Pickens County Jail to a hospital thirty minutes away in Northport, Alabama, for a mental health assessment, Foster, thirty-one, was discovered unconscious inside a police car. The State Bureau of Investigation in Alabama is looking into his passing.

The agency sent a statement saying, “Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.” “Once complete, the findings will be turned over to the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney’s Office.”

The district attorney’s office refrained from commenting, stating solely that any evidence of a crime found during the inquiry will be shown to a grand jury in order to potentially result in criminal charges.

There is still unresolved racial animosity in Pickens County, according to Black locals, who are deeply suspicious of the unclear circumstances surrounding Foster’s killing. There were 14 lynchings there between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Local civil rights attorneys and activists have accused the local police department of carrying out homicidal operations with impunity in recent years. Foster is the third.A black man who, since 2019, has either been slain by police or died under suspicious circumstances while in the custody of the police in Pickens County, which has 20,000 residents.

“There is a pattern and practice of violating the constitutional rights of African Americans by this sheriff’s department,” Benjamin Crump, the prominent attorney who has been retained by Foster’s family, told ESPN. “They play this game of charades where they try to delay, delay, delay by saying it is an ongoing investigation in hopes that people are going to forget and they can sweep it under the rug. [But] we’re going to keep pushing.”

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FOSTER’S DEATH CAME two days after he was arrested for allegedly speeding and attempting to elude police in tiny Reform, Alabama, just west of Tuscaloosa. Police in Reform said they clocked Foster’s black 2020 Jeep Wrangler going 92 mph in a 45-mph zone shortly before midnight on Friday, Dec. 3.

Police said Foster led them on an 8-mile chase that ended in the town of Gordo, where police laid down spike strips to stop him. His car rolled through a parking lot and behind some businesses before hitting a metal railing. Police charged Foster with reckless endangerment and resisting arrest, and he was taken to the Pickens County Jail.

The next morning, Foster’s father said he received an email from Reform Police Chief Richard Black. Glenn Foster Sr. called the chief, who explained the circumstances of the arrest, and immediately suspected his son was having a mental health episode. Foster was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder in 2010, but his family says he mostly managed his condition well.

Foster Sr. told Black that the behavior he was hearing about was out of character and agreed with the chief that his son needed a mental health evaluation.

“For him to try to elude police was not the Glenn we raised,” Foster Sr. said. “I’ve been pulled over by police. He’s been pulled over by the police before. You show your proof of insurance, your driver’s license and your registration, you get your ticket and you keep on trucking.”

Foster Sr. made arrangements with police to bail out his son, but by the time he, his wife, Sabrina, and Pamela Foster arrived in Pickens County from Louisiana on Sunday, things had changed.