‘The bullets never stopped coming’

PITTSBURGH – As basketball players Aaron Jackson and Stephen Wood lay helpless in front of a Duquesne University dormitory, bullet after bullet flew by them – and the same thought crossed each of their minds.

“It seemed like the bullets never stopped coming,” Jackson said Monday.

“They kept coming, constantly,” Wood said.

Five Duquesne players were struck by those bullets early Sunday morning by an unidentified shooter or shooters that injured nearly half the team’s scholarship athletes – a blow unparalleled in any NCAA Division I basketball program.

Monday, three players remained hospitalized. Junior college transfer forward Sam Ashaolu, 23, of Toronto, a cousin of former Houston Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon, was in critical condition, his life in danger, after a bullet shattered and separated into three sections of his head.

Stuard Baldonado, 21, a 6-foot-7 forward and another junior college transfer, of Colombia, was in fair condition with left arm and back injuries. He was told by surgeons a bullet missed his spinal column – which would almost certainly cause paralysis – by one-quarter of an inch before lodging in a lower back muscle.

Junior guard Kojo Mensah, 21, of New York City, who was shot in the arm and shoulder, was kept in the hospital for another night to receive antibiotics.

Jackson, 20, of Hartford, Conn., and Shawn James, 23, of New York City were treated and released.

In interviews Monday, several players said the shootings apparently resulted from an act of jealousy by a non-student unhappy that the girlfriend he accompanied to a dance, sponsored by the Black Student Union, talked with a player or players for the Dukes.

“We didn’t have any conflict at all,” said Wood, a freshman who left New York City partly to live on what traditionally is considered a safe campus. “We were just having a good time. There was jealousy because girls were showing us attention.”

The players were followed by the disgruntled non-student and at least one of his acquaintances when they left the dance, they said, and the shootings happened as the players walked toward the dormitory. Mensah, Ashaolu and Baldonado were the first to be hit; James was wounded on the foot but escaped by running across the nearby football field.

Wood, who was not struck, said he saw Baldonado bleeding badly from his left arm and quickly took off his own shirt and applied a tourniquet.

“I turned away, and saw Stu on the floor, and my first reaction was to … try to stop the bleeding. Then I turned around and I saw Sam laying there.”

Mensah, struck himself, aided several players by helping to barricade them behind a steel door. Jackson lifted the 250-pound Baldonado on his back, carried him to his car and drove him to nearby Mercy Hospital.