(Newser)
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Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend seemed just like any other couple in the weeks before the murder-suicide over the weekend, their friends say. The Kansas City Chiefs linebacker and Kasandra Perkins argued, but only about "normal couple stuff," a friend who took community college classes with Perkins tells the AP. "It doesn't seem that that would be the end of their story," she says. "It just seems like if things didn't work out, they would have gone their separate ways. I would never have thought that this would be how it ended." The couple, who had a 3-month-old daughter, had lived apart briefly but were back together by Thanksgiving, the friend says.
- Another friend of Perkins' who lives close to the couple says that although they threw "a lot of parties," she heard nothing unusual the morning before Belcher killed Perkins, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and killed himself.
- Perkins' family says the relationship had long been strained and it became worse after the birth of their daughter, Newsday reports. But Belcher's family says he had never shown any violent tendencies. The couple were "the only people who knew what went on in their relationship," his sister says. "And both of them are gone."
- The Chiefs decided to play on at Arrowhead Stadium the day after the murder-suicide. They broke an eight-game losing streak by beating the Carolina Panthers 27-21, though the atmosphere was far from celebratory, the Kansas City Star reports. "Guys are confused," center Ryan Lilja said. "A lot of hugs, a lot of tears, a lot of guys saying, 'I love you' and meaning it."
- Bizarrely, Belcher wasn't the only NFL employee to kill himself at a team facility on Saturday. A member of the Cleveland Browns' grounds crew killed himself at a training facility the same day, the AP reports.
