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Two Redskins running backs gave 10-year-old Jaden Watts a memory he’ll never forget on Tuesday.
As Scott Allen at the Washington Post reports, the story began when running backs Keith Marshall and Rob Kelley were at a shopping mall just outside D.C., and spotted the young Watts browsing around a GameStop and wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey.
The players complimented Watts on the jersey, and later overheard the boy ask about the price of a new Xbox One, mentioning that he was hoping to save up for one in the near future. The players spoke, and later asked if they could buy the video game system for him. Watts ran over to his grandmother Saundra, who was getting her makeup done while Jaden browsed, and asked her to come back with him to the store.
Jaden would later say, “She did not believe me. She thought it was some person who was joking with me or something.”
Saundra, who works as an advocate for abused and neglected children, was worried about something entirely different.
“The first thing I’m thinking is there’s some pedophile trying to buy my grandson an Xbox,” she said. “So I’m like, I’m going to bust up in there and bust his bubble.”
Instead, she was met by Marshall and Kelly. Marshall explained who they were, asked “Is it okay if we buy your son an Xbox?” and with approval, got him the system, along with a copy of NBA 2K18, and told Jaden to stay true to himself.
While the players did not post about exchange, saying they didn’t want the scene to look like a publicity stunt, but the news got out after one Facebook user who oversaw the events unfold wrote a post detailing the experience.
“That’s not what I did it for,” Kelley said. “It’s cool that everyone knew it, but I’m not trying to promote it. Me and Keith, we didn’t want to take a picture because we didn’t want to make it seem like we’re trying to make it seem like that. We had a conversation for a long time and talked to the GameStop people for a minute. But we wanted to make it known that it was not a publicity stunt.”
You can watch Kelley detail the random act of kindness a bit more below, courtesy of ESPN.