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He is Joe Arbitello, the young guy who coaches basketball at Christ the King, and his team had just beaten Bishop Loughlin Memorial in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, on Friday night. It was 69-57 for Christ the King, and now Arbitello was crossing Clermont, walking to where he had to park the team bus, when he heard the gunshots.
"Bang bang bang, like that," Arbitello says. "Listen, I'm a city kid. Queens Village. It's not the first time I've heard gunfire in my life. I started running."
He knew his players were still inside Loughlin, told to wait for him there until he came back for them. Now at 10 o'clock on a Friday night in Brooklyn, not knowing where the shooter was, just knowing he was closer to the bus than to the gym at Loughlin, Arbitello's only thought was to get off the street and get down. It was happening to him because it can happen anywhere.
He didn't know if he'd be any safer inside the bus. But Arbitello, a few minutes after a big win for his team, 33 years old, a former Christ the King player now coaching his old school, was just looking for cover now.
"I am going to be honest with you," he says. "I'm in Brooklyn on a Friday night and as soon as I hear the gun, I'm thinking about Tucson."
Arbitello says, "It doesn't matter where you are if there's a gun in the area."
He is a New York City high school basketball coach, on the other side of the country from Tucson. But it was only six days after six were dead because of a shooting there, outside a Safeway on a Saturday morning. One of the dead was a 9-year-old girl named Christina Taylor Green. She was the granddaughter of Dallas Green, a great old baseball man.
And she was the daughter of John Dallas Green and Roxanna Green. The gunman never cares if it is someone's child. Neither does the gun. At least nobody died on the street outside Bishop Loughlin Memorial. But four were shot.
The guy with the gun, still being sought yesterday, was some fat guy in an orange jumpsuit. He apparently wanted the expensive knit caps being worn by a 19-year old named Justin Dolcy and a friend with whom Dolcy had attended the Christ the King vs. Loughlin basketball game.
One of the bullets lodged in the foot of a teenage girl named Tyesha Lespinasse, who said this to the Daily News:
"How do you tell a mother their son's gone, over a hat?"
So far no one has found the gun. It is known that 9-mm. shell casings were found on a playground at Vanderbilt and Greene. Where did the gun come from? Where they always come from: somewhere.
