What circumstances do police believe may have led up to Sahel Kazemi killing both Steve McNair and herself?
Six months ago, former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair exchanged phone numbers with Sahel Kazemi, then 19 and working at Dave & Buster’s restaurant. Saturday, the relationship ended when they were found dead in a Nashville condo. McNair’s death has been ruled a homocide; Kazemi’s is still being investigated. Police continue to investigate the circumstances of the events leading up to the deaths, but according to friends of Kazemi, she was smitten and so was McNair. Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi were kind of an open secret, it seems. He bought her a black Cadillac Escalade for her 20th birthday this past May. Her family met the former NFL star over a sushi dinner that same weekend. “We met him because I don’t watch football and didn’t know who he was,” said Farzin Abdi, Kazemi’s nephew, who was in town from Jacksonville to retrieve the body. Kazemi’s family and friends pieced together a portrait of their relationship – one they were leery of because of her age – as officials c
Just two months after Steve McNair taped a youth suicide prevention public service announcement, his lover shot and killed him as he slept and then turned the gun on herself. Police said Kazemi, who began dating the married McNair five months ago, was facing a personal financial crisis. Though she told friends that the former NFL quarterback bought her an SUV for her birthday several weeks ago, Kazemi apparently was responsible for the payments, police said. She was still making payments on her Kia and had been unsuccessfully trying to sell it. In addition, her roommate was about to move out of the Nashville condo they shared, effectively doubling the rent for the Dave & Buster’s waitress. Kazemi’s friends and family said the Iranian native was in love with McNair. She would tell them that McNair had promised to leave his wife and four sons to marry her. But police said the relationship had soured recently. Kazemi believed McNair was having an affair with another woman. Days before the
