Keion White can smile at it now. The 49ers defensive end had a grueling offseason coming back from a gunshot wound to his right ankle, suffered during an altercation in the early-morning hours the Monday after Super Bowl 60.
“It’s different because it’s trauma instead of just, like, breaking an ankle with a sports-related injury,” White said Tuesday, talking about the injury publicly for the first time since it happened. “When you hurt yourself in football, there’s a protocol for damn near everything. Football players don’t just get shot every day.
“… I mean, I guess they do on this team,” White added in a moment of attempted levity, referencing an incident in which Niners receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot during an attempted robbery in August 2024. Pearsall made his NFL debut two months later.
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“But, yeah, it’s not … it’s not a normal thing, getting shot,” White said.
In addition to the gunshot wound, White, 27, also spent part of this summer recovering from an abductor injury that caused him to miss a week of training camp. The 49ers will be counting on him in the season opener against the Rams next week in Australia, because defensive end Mykel Williams (knee) is out, Nick Bosa (knee) likely will be on a snap count, and Sam Okuayinonu (foot) and rookie Romello Height (ankle) are also both dealing with injuries.
The season opener is upon us, and it seems like more than seven months ago that White was wounded at 4 a.m., in a San Francisco nightclub following the nearby Super Bowl. The incident allegedly started when rapper Lil Baby and his group tried to get into a private event that White was hosting, according to a police spokesperson.
“It was a gunshot to the foot,” White said. “I broke my talus bone, so I had to have surgery — two screws in there. But, yeah, brush it off. (I) literally was making jokes as I was going to the hospital.”
White said he didn’t fear for his life, and he reportedly declined to identify his shooter. No suspect had been named.
“The funny part is, I was actually the one calming everybody else down,” he said. “I don’t really take a lot of things seriously. I didn’t even know I got shot until like five minutes after, as I was walking around.”
He still has those two screws in his ankle.
“So, I got screws in each ankle now, so I’m symmetrical” joked White, who suffered a prior ankle injury ahead of the 2021 college football season.
But he’s not caring any emotional baggage from the shooting.
“Mentally, I was cool,” White said. “Like, I wasn’t really mentally traumatized or anything like that. Unfortunately, I’ve been in a situation, growing up and everything, where they had a shooting before — this was just unfortunately my time. It wasn’t traumatic at all, really.”
The recovery, though, was taxing. White has been working with Lily Abdelmalek, who’s been his personal trainer since he was coming out of Georgia Tech and getting ready for the NFL scouting combine in 2023.
“He spent a lot of time in physical therapy this year before we actually started the training regimen,” said Abdelmalek in a phone interview. “There was more one-on-one training, rather than group offseason training — making sure that he was getting in shape and getting the same type of power that he once had before the gunshot.”
“I think we got him to where he needed to be.”
The 6-foot-5, 285-pound White is moving well, and the 49ers remain happy they traded a sixth-round pick to the Patriots for him last season.
White, a second-round pick in 2023, had six sacks in his first two seasons with the Patriots but largely felt misused in that scheme — and the 49ers agreed. They like moving him inside on passing downs, when he is not helping set the edge on the outside.
White is also taking on a leadership role for the younger players, both with the 49ers and among those who worked out with him during his offseason program, where Abedelmalek and her team train roughly 40 NFL players.
“He was already the type of person that, when faced with any type of injury or setback, he will always be on top of it,” Abdelmalek said. “And he just has a natural talent, being as explosive as he is and with the kind of power that he has. And now, he’s been able to mentor younger guys coming in.”
For his part, White is excited about Height and another rookie defensive tackle, Gracen Halton. He’s eager for the 49ers to kick off the regular season, too.
And though the shooting is out of mind — ironically, White might be the healthiest defensive end on the team — the ankle still bears some daily upkeep.
“To be honest, it’s still an ongoing thing,” White said. “Still recovering, taking it a day at a time. But I feel pretty good right now. It was like a touch-and-go situation right up to the beginning of training camp, for real.”