Ex-FSU, Giants Wide Receiver Travis Rudolph Charged With Murder

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL — Former Florida State University and Giants wide receiver Travis Rudolph faces charges after a deadly shooting in Palm Beach County.

The 25-year-old football player was booked into Palm Beach County Jail around 8 a.m. and faces four felony counts of premeditated first-degree murder, according to his booking record.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office tweeted that four individuals were shot at or by Rudolph in Lake Park just after midnight Wednesday.

Only two of them were struck by gunfire. One man was killed, while another individual was brought to a hospital for treatment, deputies tweeted. Two were uninjured in the shooting.

Patch contacted the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office for additional information.

Rudolph was a star football player at West Palm Beach’s Cardinal Newman High School. When he graduated, he ranked as the No. 1 high school wide receiver recruit in the country, the Miami Herald reported.

He went on to play at Florida State University for three years. While at FSU, an image of Rudolph eating lunch with an autistic boy went viral and he was widely praised for his kindness, CBS reported.

He left FSU in 2017 for the NFL Draft. After going undrafted, he landed on the Giants practice squad, the Herald reported.

He was promoted to the regular team midseason but cut in the offseason. The Miami Dolphins signed him to their practice squad, but a first-day injury cut his time with the team short and ended his NFL career, reports said.

In December 2019, Rudolph was signed by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Canadian Football League, but never played a game for them, Darren Cameron, the team’s senior director of public and player relations, tweeted Wednesday.

The team also tweeted that it released Rudolph from its roster after learning about his arrest.