Tank Dell publicly spoke out for the first time on Tuesday about the nightclub shooting that saw him suffer a gunshot wound in April, nearly taking apart his second season with the Texans.
The wide receiver was an innocent bystander at the mass shooting at Cabana Live in Sanford, Fla., and came away with a “minor wound” after the gunfire was sparked by a verbal argument between 16-year-old Christopher Bouie Jr. and another individual.
“My boys saw that I was home so they hit me up and was like ‘pull up to the party,’” Dell said on Barstool Sports’ “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast along with fellow guest and his Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud.
“They told me there was going to be security, people getting checked at the door. So I’m like, ‘All right, cool.’ It’s a good vibe, and there was a lot of people that I knew in there, so it was cool. Then that s-t popped off outta nowhere.”
Dell, 24, was in Florida to visit his mother in Daytona Beach, which is just under 40 miles away from Sanford.
As the altercation between the two clubgoers heated up, Dell explained that he thought he was far removed enough from the incident, but it didn’t turn out far enough.
The shooting, which occurred while two Seminole County Sheriff’s deputies were checking people in at the front doors, left 10 people wounded.
Stroud explained that he first heard the news about the shooting through a text message from the Texans’ PR team while attending a 76ers game.
“All I read was, ‘Tank got shot,’ and I just dropped my phone,” Stroud said. “I started tearing up, man. You know, when you hear that, you start thinking the worst.”
The second-year quarterback went on to say it was an eye-opening experience as a young professional athlete still getting acclimated to the pro world.
“Sometime[s] I go home, that’s where I’m comfortable at, going to the pool parties, going to the bowling alleys, like the skating rinks to the house parties, like, these the people I grew up with, I ain’t change cause I got a little bit of money,” he said. “But for that moment to happen that quick, it was like an eye-opener experience, not only for Tank but really for the rest of the world and athletes all around.”
Three weeks after the shooting, Dell is fully healthy and is on the Texans’ practice field to prep for his second NFL season.
During his rookie year, Dell recorded 47 catches, 701 yards and seven touchdowns across 11 appearances, including eight starts.
He was the Texans’ third-round pick (69th overall) in the 2023 draft out of University of Houston.