Lufkin HS grad, NFL player thwarts car burglar

HOUSTON, TX (KTRE) - Former Lufkin Panther and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Jorvorskie Lane found himself having to do the tackling after catching a car burglar in the act in Houston early Thursday.

Houston Police Public Information Officer Jodi Silva said Lane was walking through his house in the Kingwood area around 2:30 a.m. when he saw the lights on his 2012 Dodge Durango on. He said he saw a teenager walking past his house and told him to stop, Silva said.

"I saw him and made sure he didn't have any weapons," Lane said in a telephone interview Thursday. "Because I have to protect my family first."

Lane yelled for him to stop and grabbed the juvenile and pushed him to the ground and made him lie there, Silva said.

"I had to wrestle him a little bit," Lane said. "But I just used my football technique and it was over with."

Silva said Lane made him lie down and wait for police and when officers arrived, the juvenile was lying on the ground and Lane was standing a few feet away from him.

"He tried to get me to let him get away but I said, 'You made your mistake, now you have to be punished,'" Lane said.

Silva said the juvenile had taken football cleats and gloves out of the SUV. He had jumped the fence in the gated community and bit his tongue but said Lane did not hit him. He was taken to a Houston hospital, where he was checked on the tongue injury and released into Houston police custody.

"He will be referred to Harris County Juvenile authorities," Silva said.

Lane said he hoped to talk to the juvenile when everything is settled.

"I have to," Lane said. "I talked to him about what was going on with him and he basically told me his mom wasn't there for him, his dad has been in and out of prison and I understood. I've been in that situation where I didn't feel love also and I understood where he was coming from but my thing for him is you don't have to rely on your parents. There are other ways to get things in life done. It don't have to be that way."

Lane is serving a two-game suspension for violating the NFL's performance-enhancing drug policy. Lane said at the time of the suspension that it was from weight-loss supplements he took which he learned had banned substances. He will be eligible to play again on Nov. 1.

"I'll be back," Lane said. "I'll be better as a person, still working hard. And the plan is, from what [Head Coach Lovie Smith] told me, we're going right back in and I'll be jump right back in like nothing ever happened and we'll turn our season back around."

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