Who Shot Cam'ron?

That night, Cam'ron and his entourage hit the trendy H20 nightclub on Water Street, off Maine Avenue SW near the city's waterfront. Hip-hop mogul Diddy, a Howard alum, was hosting the annual Homecoming Blockfest there with a crowd that included music stars and tennis ace Venus Williams.

But Cam'ron and his 30-member entourage were stopped at H2O's door. Some of them were wearing T-shirts, jerseys and jeans -- not up to the club's dress code. So Cam'ron and a friend left in his Lamborghini -- a 2006 Gallardo that has been featured in a music video and his publicity photos. Some in the group followed in the pink Range Rover.

At New York and New Jersey avenues NW, Cam'ron stopped at a red light. By now it was 1:20 a.m. A burgundy Ford Expedition pulled up. A man got out of the passenger side, walked up to the Lamborghini and began shooting. Then he fired at the Range Rover.

Cam'ron and his friends weren't the only ones to see it happen. So did an officer with D.C. Protective Services, an agency that protects District government property. He was at the intersection, too -- in a marked police car.

Cam'ron was hit in both arms but was able to speed off. The gunman jumped back into the Expedition, and the driver hit the gas, but they crashed into a parked car and a house in the 600 block of U Street NW. Both doors of the SUV were jammed, and the men had to shoot out a window to escape. They got away before the Protective Services officer could catch them.

Police later searched the Expedition and turned up fingerprints, a Nextel phone and shell casings. They also found a .45-caliber handgun in a nearby alley. Investigators tracked down the Expedition's owner, but the trail did not end there; the owner apparently rented the SUV to someone else, and police are having trouble establishing who was using it that night.

Cam'ron was treated at Howard University Hospital. The wounds weren't severe, but he did suffer nerve damage in his right arm that will require follow-up surgery. More than a dozen hours after the shooting, he was released from the hospital and faced a media throng.

He stood outside the hospital touching the $200,000 worth of jewelry around his neck and proclaimed: "They didn't get anything; I still got my car and my jewelry." He made other boasts: "I didn't give up the car because I paid $250,000 for it. I won't just give up anything to anybody because they're waving a gun around." And: "I roll with the punches. The people who did it was real sloppy."

Was he mad at D.C.? "I love D.C." Cam'ron proclaimed. "This could have happened in Idaho or Wyoming."

Cam'ron's publicity department went into overdrive. It put out a news release reassuring everyone that "Cam'ron will be just fine." And while it was at it, the PR team made sure to plug the release in February of what it called "Cam'ron's next highly anticipated album and feature film, KILLA SEASON."

Through his publicists, Cam'ron declined several requests to be interviewed for this story.

A few days after the gunfire, he was on a New York hip-hop station talking up the remix of a song called "Get Em Daddy" that will include new lyrics about his shooting. And soon after that, he was on MTV, promoting his music and wondering whether he was the target of a hit.