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 confirmed Sunday that McNair was shot four times in the early morning hours of July 4.
Police say Steve McNair was murdered.
They have yet to classify the death of Sahel Kazemi, who died of one gunshot wound to the side of the head. Police found a gun beneath her body.
Before the clandestine couple was found dead of gunshot wounds early Saturday, Sahel Kazemi had told her nephew that Steve McNair “owned multiple guns.”
According to The Tennessean, Kazemi had discussed visiting a shooting range with Farzin Abdi, and had mentioned that she was unhappy living alone.
They discussed the potential for Kazemi acquiring a gun permit, but according to Abdi, “She told me she didn’t have to because Steve had lots of guns.”
Steve, 36, married Mechelle McNair in 1997, and no accounts of the couple’s separation have been reported. The McNairs have four children together.
Soheyla Kazemi, Sahel’s sister, rejected theories that her sister may have orchestrated a murder-suicide, killing the former football great and herself.
“It’s not true. She loves Steve too much,” Soheyla Kazemi said in an interview with the Florida Times-Union. “She said they were planning to get married.”
Nashville police have solicited the help of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to trace the origin of the gun they found at the crime scene Saturday.