Gunfire outside Sacramento nightclub kills former football standout Greg Najee Grimes

Greg Najee Grimes never forgot his roots — or his family.

The 31-year-old former football star at Inderkum High School and Boise State University returned to coach at his high school after college and was working with special education children until last December, when he started a staffing firm and began planning out the rest of his life.

“He was really super excited, just got that off the ground,” his mother, Deborah, said of her only son with her husband, Gregory Grimes. “He was in escrow closing on a new home last week, just paid off his student loans last week, just paid off his car last week.”

And he was looking forward to a special July 4 celebration for his 4-year-old son, Jaceyon, or “Ace,” making certain that his mother had picked up the precise fireworks Sunday for his son to enjoy.

Grimes never made it to that celebration. Instead, he was killed early Monday leaving the Mix Downtown nightclub at 16th and L streets when gunfire erupted outside and he was hit with three rounds to his chest, his mother said. Four other people were wounded in the early morning shooting.

“He went down the stairs and he was waiting for the others to come out,” his mother said. “He called twice to one of the friends but since they were on the way down the stairs they didn’t answer.

“And then they heard the shots and when they got to the door they saw him on the ground. They said he was having a great time. There were no confrontations. Everybody was just having a great time. They were just celebrating it was going to be the Fourth of July.”

Grimes was taken to UC Davis Medical Center, where doctors worked to save him while friends and his family gathered hoping for the best, his mother said.

“They worked on him for about 20 minutes trying to do CPR, and then when they got to the hospital they tried more to revive him,” she said. “They broke open his chest cavity so they could try to massage his heart, so he was really trying. They took him into surgery, but he ever regained consciousness. He didn’t make it.

“We had no idea. We didn’t expect what they were going to say. We thought they were going to say, ‘OK, he was shot and he’s asked for his parents to come up.’ That’s what we were expecting. We did not know.”

Grimes was shooting victim in 2017

Grimes already had survived a previous shooting at a downtown nightclub in 2017, when gunman Adrian Calderon shot Grimes in the neck and wounded a security guard at the Parlare Euro Lounge. Calderon was convicted and sentenced in 2019 to 35 years and four months in prison, according to Bee archives.

But Grimes’ mother said she does not believe that her son was targeted on Monday.

“He’s never been in the streets or anything, he doesn’t have that kind of background,” she said. “You just would never think that someone like him would be murdered. He just doesn’t fit a profile of a troublemaker or anything like that.

“His former high school coach Terry Stark from Inderkum just called, he’s just in tears, he’s just broken,” she said.

Another coach, Todd Hamasaki, shared disbelief in the loss.

“He was an amazing coach and role model to so many kids and wanted to do what he did — coach,” Hamasaki said.

Grimes already was grieving the loss of his close friend, Giovanni “DJ Gio” Pizano, who was killed in an April shooting along with another man in Sacramento’s Natomas Crossing area.

“I can’t explain how devastating this is right now,” Grimes’ mother said. “It’s extremely surreal. He was just grieving over his friend DJ Gio.”

Grimes leaves behind 4-year-old son

Grimes shared custody of his son with the boy’s mother, and the family had not yet told the boy Monday morning what happened to his father, who was described as a doting father.

“His son just finished T-ball, that was his first team sport,” Deborah Grimes said. “His son was getting ready to start kindergarten in August. He’s turning 5 next month, and all of this was a big deal, everything was a big deal. He wanted to see him play Pop Warner. He was excited about his son being able to turn 5 and play football.”

Grimes came from a football background. His father was a fierce strong safety for the University of Washington Huskies for Coach Don James’ teams in the 1970s, and Deborah Grimes said her son wanted to be just like him.

Grimes, known as Najee to his parents and Greg to his friends, was Inderkum High’s first scholarship player in any sport, and regularly visited and talked to teachers and students throughout his collegiate days, where he played as a defensive tackle and appeared in two Fiesta Bowls.

“He was Academic All American at Boise, but he also graduated with honors and was the first student-athlete at Inderkum to earn a scholarship,” she said. “He was first-team everything. He has a lot of accolades.”

His mother said he remained close to his Boise State teammates, including many who went on to NFL careers.

“He has friends all around the NFL who he just remained close with, and when I say close I mean they send their kids Christmas presents,” she said. “At the hospital were friends that he went to kindergarten with. His friends are friends, they stay friends, they all stay close.

“He’s like a glue, he keeps a lot of other people together.”

Grimes also was especially close to his parents, visiting their home four to five days a week, his mother said.

“He’s very much a mama’s boy and a daddy’s boy because he’s our only child,” she said. “He has a floral subscription so he could just randomly send me flowers. He’s just pure.”

Deborah Grimes said she hopes someone from the public will respond to pleas from Sacramento police to provide information about the shooting. Police have tweeted a QR code that allows for witnesses to the event to submit video to help investigators.

“We’re both really prayerful that someone will say something about the shooter,” Deborah Grimes said, adding that she last spoke to her son Sunday night.

“He just Facetimed me last night about 10:30, and he was telling me about how he was just really excited being at the fireworks today with his son,” she said. “We had taken his son to pick the fireworks up, so we said, ‘Yeah, we got them all, we got what you wanted.

“He’s just a very involved father.”

This story was originally published July 4, 2022 at 10:48 AM.