University of Houston Athletics
Former Cougar Owens Passes Away
8/3/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 3, 2004
Former University of Houston football player and current San Angelo Stampede lineman Patterson Owens collapses and died suddenly Monday (Aug, 2) evening at San Angelo Community Medical Center. He was 28. Owens was with his teammates from San Angelo's first-year pro indoor football team Monday afternoon when he collapsed and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, Stampede general manager Amanda McPeak said. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead a short time later. A Community Medical Center spokesman said he could offer no details beyond confirming the death. "Johnny Anderson (a Stampede wide receiver) called me at 5:45 (p.m.) and said they'd brought Patterson to the hospital and had been working on him for the last 30 minutes," Stampede owner Neal Garcia said. "By the time I'd gotten here, he had already passed away." Owens, a Mobile, Ala., native and Houston resident who played college football for the University of Houston from 1997-98 and was in the San Francisco 49ers training camp for a short time in 1999, had been plagued by nagging injuries much of the season and had not worked out with the team the past two weeks after complaining of chest pains, McPeak said. She said Owens' pain was diagnosed as indigestion. At a team meeting Monday morning, McPeak said, Owens complained of a headache and was sweating so badly that she offered the 6-foot-5, 285-pound athlete her chair. Owens also attended Monday's 3 p.m. press conference at which team officials announced that Stampede head coach Dean Cokinos had been suspended. "He had been right here in our office," Garcia said. Garcia and McPeak each referred to Owens as a "gentle giant." "Everything about him was good," Garcia said. "He was just a genuinely nice guy." McPeak said Owens was active as a counselor for troubled youth in Houston and is survived by a son and his fiancee.
