DeAndre Hopkinsand his motherSabrina Greenleeare opening up about the 2002 acid attack that changed their family.
17 years ago, Greenlee was blinded in an acid attack and left for dead at a gas station. A woman threw a mixture of lye and bleach on Greenlee after learning her boyfriend was cheating on her with Greenlee. Hopkins, now a wide receiver for the Houston Texans, was 10 years old at the time.
In a newESPN Cover Storymulti-platform piece published on Wednesday, Greenlee opened up about her ordeal.
“As I’m lying there, the first thing I’m thinking is, ‘Why would someone pour warm water on my face?’ ” she said of the moments after the attack. “But a couple of seconds later, I realized it wasn’t warm water, because my skin is literally falling off my face, my neck, my chest and my back.”
Sabrina Greenlee/Instagram
“I was in shock that somebody could look like that,” Hopkins, now 27, said. “It was really scary — and to think that’s my mom, she’s gonna be like that the rest of her life. I was hoping that it was a dream.”
As Greenlee started to recover, she began to look for work so she could support her kids, explaining that she kept thinking, “I’m the only source of support that my children have … now I’ve failed them.”
“I thought I was doing what I needed to do,” she explained. “In hindsight, it was the worst thing I could’ve done, when you have kids that are just trying to go to sleep and get up in the mornings to go to school … but I was just seeing it as a way to make money.”
Sabrina Greenlee in July 2019.Image Group LA via Getty
As Hopkins grew up and became a local football star, Greenlee found it difficult to go out in public to attend his games, telling ESPN that she was self-conscious of her injuries.
“I knew he wanted me there, but it was really tough,” she said.
“I was able to cope with being blind and the scars and the ridicule,” she shared. “And I think it gave me the courage to eventually find myself.”
DeAndre Hopkins.Daniel Dunn/Icon Sportswire/Getty
Today, Greenlee runs a non-profit calledSMOOOTH(Speaking Mentally, Outwardly Opening Opportunities Toward Healing) to “empower, educate and prepare” survivors of domestic violence.
“It’s helped me learn a lot, about life, about how to treat a woman,” Hopkins told ESPN of working with his mother’s non-profit. “It’s helped me become a man.”
Almost two decades after the attack, Greenlee is able to mostly manage on her own, using voice-activated technology and walking around in her apartment without a cane. Though her vision fully disappeared a few years ago, she still comes to her son’s games.
“It goes back to when I got the courage up when he was in junior high,” she said. “I remember him saying, ‘I just want you to be there.’ So if I’m there, and I’m present, and I’m alive … that’s ultimately all he wants. He doesn’t care that I can’t see.”
source: people.com
