A 17-year long wait might be over for Katina Smith, the mother of Demaryius Thomas, as she is released from prison.
Smith was arrested in 1999, along with Thomas’ maternal grandmother, for narcotics trafficking. She was scheduled to be released in 2017, but in July, President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders.
In a Facebook video, Obama said that the 46 prisoners had received sentences disproportionate to their crimes. Smith was one of them.
Demaryius Thomas said they're working on getting his mom here Sunday. She's allowed to travel & this would be her 1st time seeing him play
— James Palmer (@JamesPalmerTV) January 13, 2016
Thomas was just 11 years old at the time. His grandmother, Minnie Pearl, recieved a lifetime sentence for the crime and remains in prison.
Smith has been at a halfway house in Georgia since the sentence was commuted, and was cleared to leave in November. She had a 60-day waiting period before being allowed to travel.
Thomas told The Denver Post that the plan is to get his mom there. “That’s what we’re working on,” Thomas said Wednesday. “Hopefully. That’s the goal.”
It would be the first time his mother would see him play at a higher level. His mother and grandmother never saw Thomas play in high school, or in college at Georgia Tech, or in the NFL with the Broncos.
“It’d mean a lot,” Thomas told The Denver Post. “It’d be her first game. I know she’d be excited. It’d mean a lot for her to see my first game live”
