Alexandria Police Case No. 05151318 is still open.
On the night he played his first NBA minutes, Andray Blatche cannot talk in detail about the attempted carjacking, because the man who shot Blatche and another assailant are presumed to be still at large.
"The only time I really think about it is when I'm getting in and out of a car," he said. "I always watch my surroundings a lot closer."
The tall, lanky teenager with the babykins smile and sleepy eyes calmly shows you where the bullet passed through his right forearm, out the inside of his wrist, through his left pectoral and finally out the left side of his rib cage. Four puncture wounds, including one that missed his aorta by an inch. The bullet never lodged within his body.
"They found it in the car," Blatche said. "I was real lucky and real blessed. I feel like God got me for a reason and a purpose, that there's something I haven't finished yet."
Crazy, no, a 19-year-old thinking he is closer to the end than the beginning? A little more than a month after he suffered a gunshot wound and lay in a hospital bed for three days, Blatche checked into his first NBA game last night. With eight minutes left in a rout of Seattle, the 49th pick in the draft got off the bench to a nice applause, knocked down his first shot, a face-up, 20-foot jumper over Mikki Moore, and finished with four points and two pretty assists.
"It's a real good feeling, unbelievable," he said afterward. When a reporter asked to see his wound, his teammate Brendan Haywood yelled "Fifty," and chuckled.
"They call me '50 Cent,' " Blatche said, smiling. The locker room humor alludes to the rapper Curtis Jackson, also a victim of gun violence. "At least we can laugh about it a little, you know?"
Blatche's tale is that of the last teen who skipped college to chase the dream, a kid who almost wound up as a tragic parable for the NBA's final group of high schoolers allowed to declare themselves eligible for the draft that young. It's about a talented young ballplayer who grew up wanting to be Kevin Garnett and almost wound up as Alexandria's third homicide of the year.
It began as most weekend nights in September do for a full-grown teenager with a nice car, lots of disposable income and a friend with the same. Music. Girls. And the intoxicating feeling of a good Saturday night creeping into the wee hours of a Sunday morning.
Blatche was out with Peter John Ramos, his Wizards' teammate who is 20 occasionally going on 12, at H20, a club in Southwest Washington. (Maybe because Ramos is 7 feet 3 and Blatche is 6-11, no bouncer thought to card the two to check if they were under 21.) Either way, "there was some bumping in the club, but nothing I can really remember," Blatche said. "I don't have no enemies, no one who would want to do anything to me that I know of."
H2O is the same club the rapper Cam'ron was said to be frequenting outside before he was shot at a stoplight in the District. "Same thing happened to Cam'ron, same club," Blatche said. "I don't know if there is a connection, but I'm assuming there are people out there, hanging around, trying to carjack me and other athletes and entertainers."
