John Lynch rushed to San Francisco General Hospital on Saturday to check on Ricky Pearsall, who was shot in an attempted robbery, and the 49ers general manager was unprepared for how the rookie wide receiver greeted him.
Pearsall, who already was feeling better, hilariously -- and quickly -- revealed his priorities to the concerned Lynch.
Lynch joined KNBR’s “Murph and Markus” on Friday and recalled the wide receiver’s statement about the 49ers’ team party from his hospital bed.
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“We got this huge team party, we’re obviously going to cancel it,” Lynch prefaced to Brian Murphy and Markus Boucher. “But then, [I] get down to the hospital, and it looks like things are a lot better than we might have anticipated.
“Seeing Ricky, quickly the only thing he said is, ‘Mr. Lynch, I was ready to come to that party,’ and ‘What are we doing with that?’ ‘Well, Ricky, we’ll deal with that -- that party needs to happen.’ And so, that kind of was the deal -- just a gathering of support.”
Pearsall still is a college student at heart.
Lynch, of course, advised Pearsall to relax for the time being. He then reassured the rookie that the 49ers still would gather at coach Kyle Shanahan’s house with Pearsall in their hearts and on their minds.
San Francisco 49ers
Fortunately, Pearsall is doing well. However, he was quite lucky with where the bullet hit him, as anywhere else likely would’ve been much, much worse.
Lynch also took time to credit first responders in San Francisco and the 49ers’ staff.
“I said it the other day, the San Francisco Police Department was just tremendous -- the way they took care of Ricky, the way they took care of the situation,” Lynch added. “The people at San Francisco General, too -- the doctors, the nurses -- just phenomenal. The police had that hospital on lockdown, just handled things incredibly well.
“I was incredibly proud of our staff. You get in these moments of crisis … how are you going to handle things? We work hard to have action plans. You don’t have an action plan for something like this -- we try to, and we will going forward. … But man, from our security to Austin Moss and his team, Mike Anderson; Dan Cory, our director of security; [and] Corry Rush. The way they handled everything was just phenomenal.”
Lynch went on to share a promising update about the rookie receiver. But Pearsall wanting to party perhaps was the most promising update of any at the time.