Randle’s experience highlights one of the myriad ways in which an NFL locker room makes for an unusual workplace. A player may share a particularly close bond with his coworkers, around whom he spends an inordinate amount of time during the season and upon whom so much of his personal safety is dependent. But he may also be abruptly cut off from those relationships and that support system altogether for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with his job performance.

In Randle’s case, it’s unclear how much he leaned on his teammates. Friends and family say he rarely socialized with other players. “He did his own thing, but that’s not unusual,” says a team source. Asked to describe Randle, Cowboys running back Lance Dunbar, one of the few teammates Randle’s friends saw with him away from the team, smiles. He says Randle was “a character” and “funny in some ways.” Funny how? “We’d laugh at him, some of the stuff he said. Just crazy stuff, stuff he shouldn’t be saying.”

Brandon Wade/AP

In the end, whether or not the Cowboys released him, Randle would have soon been separated from his teammates. On Nov. 10, 2015, a week after being cut, he was officially banned for four games by the NFL for the alleged incident at the hotel in Wichita. But the sudden loss of employment in the midst of his personal turmoil was a jarring fissure. “The kid never really got a chance to try to put his feet around [the mental health stuff] before he had to deal with not having a team,” Haley says. “After that, it’s like his whole life just went to crap.”

Speaking to the media on the day of Randle’s release, Cowboys COO Stephen Jones referred to the running back’s “personal issues” and said his “full body of work” factored into the decision. Jerry Jones declined to address whether Randle’s looming suspension played a part. Asked about the sudden shift from his supportive comments two days earlier, he cited the “best interest of the entire team.” He continued: “We’re in good shape at running back, or we wouldn’t have made this decision.”

Those close to Randle found the quick reversal perplexing. “If Jerry was really concerned about [Joseph’s] mental health,” Rodriguez says, “he would have helped him along instead of just releasing him and saying, I can wash my hands of it.”

SAYS HALEY: AFTER RANDLE WAS CUT

“HIS WHOLE LIFE JUST WENT TO CRAP.”

Friends describe Randle in the days following his release as being “lost.” He hoped to be claimed on waivers—particularly by the Texans, so he could reunite with former Dallas and OSU quarterback Brandon Weeden—but when no one came calling, reality began to set in. “Joe was on his own,” says a friend. “He’s a kid—how much can you ridicule him for not having guidance?”

Randle moved back home, settling himself into a rental apartment owned by his father, 10 minutes from the house where he grew up. He returned to a familiar off-season routine, training twice a day in case a team came calling. But friends and family worried about his homecoming; they saw little awaiting him in his old haunts aside from detours and trouble.

Three weeks after Randle’s release, those warnings began to prove well-founded. While playing blackjack at the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane around 10:40 p.m. on Nov. 24, Randle became “belligerent” and was asked to leave, according to a source with the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission. Following an alleged physical altercation with security, he was arrested and charged with criminal trespass, interference with a law enforcement officer and two counts of disorderly conduct. Two weeks later, representing himself in court, he told a judge that he planned to plead not guilty and asked for a 30-day continuance to find an attorney, which was granted.

via Facebook

When Rodriguez’s nursing school semester ended in December, she joined Randle in Wichita. By then, she says, his paranoia seemed tempered, though he still had good days and bad ones. He gave up drinking completely for a period in January and began regular visits with a psychologist. “The first two [trips] he felt a sigh of relief,” Rodriguez says. “He was relieved that he didn’t hate it.” He continued working out regularly, running stairs with John at Wichita State’s Cessna Stadium, telling people around town that he’d received feelers from playoff-bound teams.

But the NFL postseason would pass without a contract, and Randle’s continued unemployment began weighing on him. “He would be like, ‘What you up to? Come over,’ ” says Gregory Hawkins, a friend from college. “I’d be like, ‘All right—but you know I gotta work first.’ He’d be like, ‘Man, at least you got a job.’ ”

In late January, Rodriguez returned to Dallas to resume nursing school. A month later came Randle’s 3 a.m. arrest at Rodriguez’s mother’s home for the unpaid speeding ticket. He secured a quick release and returned to Wichita, where, on the afternoon of Feb. 21, he stopped by the Boys & Girls Club to chat with Allen, as he often did. Randle mentioned two or three NFL teams as being interested in working him out. “He was still positive, still hopeful,” says Allen. The old coach reminded Randle to be mindful of trouble in town; his return to the league was already an uphill battle. “You know guys are gonna be hating,” Allen warned him. “Don’t be in the area where these kinds of guys are.” Randle seemed to be in agreement.

His actions would suggest otherwise. That evening, according to an eyewitness, Randle visited a bar in Wichita’s Old Town district. Inside, he ignored the staff’s repeated requests to remove his sunglasses—a violation of the dress code—before grudgingly complying. When he ordered a drink, he threw his cash at the bartender. A short time later, the witness says, security guards kicked him out.

Irving Police Department/AP

Around 2 a.m., at the invitation of a friend, Randle made his way to a housewarming party across town. And that, according to eyewitness testimony, is when the night devolved into chaotic violence. Randle quickly got into an argument with a man at the party over the rules of a game of beer pong; shortly thereafter he objected to the same partygoer (who is half black and half white) using the word “nigga.”

The party’s host intervened, following Randle onto the balcony and pleading with him to calm down. But back inside Randle engaged in another altercation, this time taunting the host’s 5' 7", 20-year-old younger brother. The host asked Randle to leave, and Randle complied, walking down a front set of stairs toward the door. But then, according to several witnesses, he tried dashing back up the steps, and both he and the host were sent tumbling down the staircase in a heap. At the bottom, as they pulled themselves from the fray, the host was able to push Randle out the door while party-goers leveraged the host’s back.

The host followed Randle outside to make sure he left. In his black Honda Accord, Randle backed out of the driveway as if he was leaving, then accelerated forward onto the lawn, striking the host in the legs and sending him over the hood. Witnesses say Randle then drove across a neighbor’s yard and looped back again to strike the host and his sister, who’d come to his aid, sending them onto the vehicle’s roof. (Both suffered bruises and abrasions; the sister was concussed.) When those two managed to retreat inside, Randle used his car to strike the first partygoer with whom he’d argued. When everything seemed to have finally settled and everyone was inside, Randle kicked in the locked front door and began pointing at people, demanding, “Who else wants some?!”

Randle drove across a neighbor’s yard and looped back to strike the host and his sister, sending them onto the vehicle’s roof.

Police arrived soon after and placed Randle under arrest, charging him with criminal threat, criminal property damage, unlawful possession of a controlled substance (he was carrying marijuana), aggravated burglary (for kicking the door in) and four counts of aggravated battery. (He would later tell his family that his car had been surrounded, leading to the collisions while he tried to drive away, and that he’d been defending himself during the physical altercations. He later told a judge, “I don’t recall ever driving that car.”) At a subsequent hearing he unsuccessfully petitioned a judge to lower his $100,000 bond to $5,000 so that he could “go work out” and receive “alcohol treatment” in California.

Randle spent nine days in jail, then posted full bond and was released on March 1. Five days later, after he failed to appear at his court date, a police officer arrived at his home to serve an arrest warrant. Instead, Randle took off, hopping a chain-link fence in his backyard and leading authorities on a lengthy chase down the block. Once the K-9 team arrived, Randle finally surrendered. “Hey,” he called out from behind a car, “I’m right here!”

He would run no more.