HAMPTON, Va. -- Michael Vick has returned to is Virginia home, and he's got a new fashion accessory.
Vick arrived Thursday morning after a 28-hour drive from federal prison in Kansas to start two months of home confinement.
Within 90 minutes, two probation officers arrived to fit him with an electronic monitoring device and walk with him around the backyard to make sure it worked.
Virginia-based attorney Larry Woodward said the process went well. He said Vick is technically a furloughed federal inmate and can't speak to the media without Bureau of Prisons permission. Woodward said the process to get permission is under way.
Vick spent 19 months in federal prison for financing a dogfighting operation and is finishing his sentence at home.
Vick arrived at his Virginia home in a car with blackout curtains Thursday morning after being released from federal prison to begin home confinement and try to resume his pro football career.
Four cars pulled up to Vick's five-bedroom brick home at the end of a cul-de-sac at about 8:25 a.m, about 28 hours after he left Leavenworth, Kan. The caravan was led by a black Kia Sedona with curtains in the back and sunshields on the front side windows. Vick was in the Sedona, along with his fiancee, Kijafa Frink, said Chris Garrett, a member of Vick's support and legal team.
"He's happy to be reunited with his family," Garrett said 10 minutes after the cars arrived.
Prior to the statement, a man had gotten out of the lead vehicle and moved aside orange cones blocking the driveway, then the Sedona drove into a garage on the side of the house and out of sight of the street. The other three cars followed into the driveway. Two men, presumably security guards who were part of the traveling party, stood in the driveway and three others took up posts near the front door as though to prevent anyone from approaching. The guards also walked around to the back yard, checking the in-ground pool area surrounded by a wrought-iron fence for intruders.
Vick spent 19 months in federal prison after his conviction for financing a dogfighting operation. Once released at about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, Vick traveled the 1,200 miles to get to the home, which he will share with Frink and their two children -- the youngest of whom, London, was born just before he went to prison.
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He will spend the next two months under home confinement wearing the electronic monitor and working a $10-an-hour job as a laborer for a construction company. He's scheduled to be released from federal custody on July 20, and then faces three more years of supervised probation.
His ultimate goal is a return to the NFL. Chief among his challenges is rehabilitating his image and convincing the public and Commissioner Roger Goodell that he is truly sorry for his crime, and that he is prepared to live a different life.
"It goes beyond, 'Has he paid his debt to society?' Because I think that from a legal standpoint and financially and personally, he has," Falcons owner Arthur Blank said at an NFL owners' meeting Wednesday.
