49ers prospect Dre Greenlaw rescued woman from predators

Dre Greenlaw was a football player for the University of Arkansas, and in 2015, his freshman year, he attending a Sigma Chi fraternity party where alcohol was being served.  He knew there was some risk in his being there, where any sort of boozy misbehavior could be the end of his promising football career. He was not among the top 100 or so who would be forgiven for a misstep or two.

At the party Greenlaw recognized a friend from Fayetteville High School: Meghan Daly, who was a cheerleader while he was playing on the football team.  When Greenlaw spoke to Meghan at the fraternity party, she said she didn’t feel well. He suspected someone might have slipped a drug into her drink, so he kept a watchful eye on her.

When he saw a man become physically aggressive with her, he intervened, though he knew he was inviting trouble for himself.  

He protected Meghan from assault and then spent the next 20 minutes searching the fraternity house until he found her friends who had brought her there and could return her to her room on campus.

The next morning, Meghan called him to thank him for protecting her.

She said she had been to a hospital, where her stomach was pumped to remove Rohypnol, the powerful sedative known as the date-rape drug.

When Greenlaw was selected by the San Francisco 49ers in the fifth round of last month’s NFL Draft, Meghan’s father, Gerry Daly, eagerly posted on the internet the story of the linebacker who saved his daughter from being led, in her declining state, to another venue.

No doubt she would have been endangered.

At first, Greenlaw was reluctant to own his story, because he wasn’t sure his new team and new league would have appreciated him being at a party where alcohol was served and he was underaged.  Even though he wasn’t drinking, he was in an environment where there were some disreputable people who were drinking – and much worse.

“I felt like I needed to step in,” Greenlaw told Bay Area media during his introductory press conference.  “You never know what could have happened.”

Perhaps Greenlaw felt special empathy for Meghan, as he had a difficult childhood, frequently moving in the Arkansas foster-care network.  He’s become weary of telling his life story to the football evaluators.

“First thing I got from scouts was, ‘Tell me about your family background.’  I was like, ‘Don’t you want me to tell you about my football?’”