One bone-headed fumble. Two long years behind bars.
Former Giants superstar Plaxico Burress broke into tears today as a judge sentenced him to two years prison for accidentally shooting himself in the thigh last year at a Manhattan nightclub.
The standout wide receiver — who famously caught the touchdown pass that won the 2008 Superbowl — has known since his career-halting Aug. 20 guilty plea that he’d have to turn himself in today.
Still, as he was led away by court officers — his adorable three-year-old son, Elijah, playing obliviously with a handkerchief in the courtroom audience — the disgraced player’s eyes welled up from emotion.
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“I love you,” he’d told his pregnant wife, Tiffany, as the family shared a final hug. Tears came also to his grandmother, father and stepmother, who’d accompanied him to court.
Burress’s second child, a daughter, is due in late November, not two months into his prison term. With good behavior, he’ll get out in 20 months and be able to start shopping for a new team a half-year before that.
“I want to apologize to my family, my wife and my son. And my daughter,” Burress said in brief, barely audible remarks to the judge. “I thank everybody for their support, and my family for their prayers,” he said. “We will all get through this.”
Burress spent at least last night at Riker’s Island, eating his first jail food — meatloaf and potatoes for lunch and franks and beans for dinner, said city correction spokesman Steve Morello.
There’ll be no football. Burress will be in protective custody, separated from any physical contact with other prisoners.
He’ll remain in his one-man cell until he’s transferred, as early as today, to either of the two state facilities handling intake from city jails — Downstate Correctional in Fishkill, or Ulster Correctional in Napanoch, said state corrections spokeswoman Linda Foglia.
Burress shot himself by grabbing for his unlicensed Glock when it fell out of his waistband and down his jeans leg as he stood in the crowded VIP vestibule of the Latin Quarter nightclub last November.
Had he not taken a plea to a lesser charge of attempted gun possession, he faced virtually certain conviction on gun possession charges carrying a mandatory minimum of 3 and 1/2 years. His gun was unregistered in New York, and his Florida carry license had expired six months prior.
Defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman told reporters that that if anything good was to come of the “tragic” sentence, he hoped it would be that young people would think twice about carrying a loaded gun in public — even without criminal intent.
“This has been a very emotional experience for him,” Brafman explained of his client’s tears.