Keion White spoke publicly for the first time on Tuesday about the gunshot wound to his right ankle that sent him into surgery and a summer of recovery, saying he is now back in position to help the 49ers when they open the season next week in Australia. He said he did not even realize he had been shot until about five minutes later, while he was still walking around.
The timing matters because the 49ers are leaning on White with several other defensive linemen hurt. Mykel Williams is out with a knee injury, Nick Bosa likely will be on a snap count because of a knee injury, Sam Okuayinonu is dealing with a foot injury and Romello Height has an ankle injury. White played in nine games last season after being traded by the New England Patriots, and now his availability carries more weight than it did at any point in the offseason.
White said the wound came in the early-morning hours on the Monday after Super Bowl 60, after an altercation, and that it was a gunshot to the foot that broke his talus bone. He had surgery and still has two screws in the ankle. Even so, he said the episode did not leave him fearful for his life and did not leave him mentally traumatized. “Mentally, I was cool,” he said, adding that he was “not really mentally traumatized or anything like that.”
That calm only sharpened the contrast with the physical work that followed. White said he and Lily Abdelmalek spent a lot of time in physical therapy before the training regimen started, with more one-on-one work than group offseason training to get him back to the power he had before the shooting. Abdelmalek said the goal was to get him where he needed to be, and White said the process was enough to leave him joking that he now has screws in both ankles and is symmetrical.
White also declined to identify the person who shot him, and no suspect had been named. That leaves the central question of the case unresolved, even as the football part of the story moves forward. For the 49ers, the next checkpoint is simple: get to the opener healthy enough to survive it, with White’s return from a gunshot wound now part of the plan rather than a side note.
