Bengals Receiver Chris Henry's Life Is Cut Short After a Turnabout Chris Henry had the N.F.L. logo tattooed on his right hand when he was in high school, a constant reminder of the job he aspired to as a boy and for which he ultimately became an unintentionally troubled symbol as an adult. During his brief career, Henry had become one of the examples of the league's crackdown on players with off-field troubles, his immense talent often overshadowed by the arrests and suspensions that dotted his seasons. Before the 2009 season, Henry added a new tattoo, this one near his ear reading "Blessed." When he died Thursday morning, at 26, after sustaining head injuries following a fall out of the back of a pickup truck in Charlotte, N.C., Henry had seemingly begun a turnaround as dramatic as the difference in those tattoos. "He was good at what he did as a player, he was excellent," the Bengals" owner, Mike Brown, said Thursday morning. He was a teammate to our players, a friend to almost all of us in the building. We knew him in a different way than his public persona. We liked him. He had worked through troubles in his life and had finally seemingly reached the point where everything was going to blossom and he was going to have the future we all wanted for him and he wanted for himself. Brown continued: "He had troubles and some of them were made more of than I think they actually were. Yes, it was challenging at times with him. But he was someone we liked. It's a terrible tragedy that just at a time he was running to daylight, his life was snuffed out. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg County police have described Henry's accident as the result of a domestic dispute with his fiancée, Loleini Tonga, whose family lived in Charlotte. Henry, who was on injured reserve after breaking his arm last month, was in Charlotte to plan their March wedding. The police said that the dispute began at a house about a half-mile from the accident scene and that Henry jumped into the bed of the pickup truck as his fiancée was driving away. At some point, the police said, Henry "came out of the back of the vehicle," although it was not clear how. Police released two 911 tapes. On the first, a woman said she was driving behind a yellow pickup truck. "It's got a black man on it with no shirt on, and he's got his arm in a cast and black pants on," she told a dispatcher. He's beating on the back of this truck window. I don't know if he's trying to break in or something. It just looks crazy. It's a girl driving it. A minute later, a man called 911 to say he saw a man "laying in the road" and "definitely unconscious." Brown has a reputation for giving troubled players second chances, and he gave Henry more than two. Henry had helped revitalize West Virginia's football program - he was a teammate of Adam Jones, known as Pacman, whose headline-making behavior often eclipsed Henry's. But the Bengals were able to select him in the third round because other teams were scared off by Henry's behavior in Morgantown, which included an ejection from a game. Even then, though, Henry was known as an enigma: a soft-spoken, sweet-faced player from just outside New Orleans who found mayhem when he was away from the field. "I would tell you that lad was never a bad influence or a problem in our locker room," said West Virginia Coach Bill Stewart, who said he received messages from three of Henry's former teammates Thursday. He was a fun-loving kid. He was more shy. I never saw that side of him. I never heard of him being out downtown. Then these kids get money, they get this entourage. They lose their identity. Did he make mistakes once he got into the limelight? Yes, and he was embarrassed. He brought some trouble on himself. Stewart last saw Henry when the Mountaineers played Cincinnati on Nov. 13, and Henry was on the sideline. "He was smiling," Stewart said. He had a great smile. And his laugh. That's what I remember about Chris Henry. He was on his way back. Once in the N.F.L., Henry was arrested several times after incidents involving assault, driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana possession, and he served multiple suspensions for violating the league's personal-conduct policy. He served jail time for drinking in a hotel room with underage girls. After serving an eight-game suspension in 2007 for violating the league's personal-conduct policy, he was arrested in April 2008, his fifth arrest in 28 months. He was waived by the Bengals and a local judge told Henry, "You've kind of become a one-man crime wave." The charges related to that arrest were ultimately dismissed, but according to an interview he gave The Cincinnati Enquirer this year, that arrest may have been the moment that Henry began to change. "I knew what I had to do and I was ready to do it," Henry told The Enquirer. That situation came about and I had to get my way out of it because I wasn't at fault. I had to keep working and get through it. Four months later, Brown re-signed Henry over the objections of Coach Marvin Lewis. After Henry served a four-game suspension for misconduct, he rejoined the team. Lewis met with Henry, his fiancée and the three children they were raising together. "There was a different man that was sitting across from me," Lewis said. From that point on, we've seen a continual growth of Chris, a degree of responsibility. Quite an expansion both on the field and off the field. Lewis, once skeptical of Henry, said he was touched when Henry asked him how to get extra tickets to a local high school football game, so that all of his family members could attend. Henry worked out with his teammates in the off-season, showing more commitment to his job than he had before. Before his injury, Henry had also regained a toehold in the Bengals" offense, with 12 receptions for 236 yards and two touchdowns in eight games. On Thursday, Henry's more outspoken teammate Chad Ochocinco was in tears when he spoke about Henry. The Bengals, in the middle of a season-long renaissance that mirrored Henry's, will wear a decal in his memory when they face the Chargers on Sunday. "Chris was a guy that I believe and our team believes was heavily misunderstood," Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer told reporters in Cincinnati, hours after informing his teammates of Henry's death at a meeting Thursday morning. "There was a lot of speculation about who he was," Palmer added, "but the only guys that knew Chris and knew how good of a heart he had, how kind he was, how gentle he was, how soft of a heart he had, were the guys in our locker room, the guys who were close to him, his family."