DaytonDailyNews.com

As they sat in the out-of-gas Pontiac Grand Am — waiting for the one's stepdad to return from Kroger with some fuel — the pair shared idle talk about people in the neighborhood, about going home to eat later on and especially about their basketball.

Dorian Hoover and Aaron Pogue are two of the city's most prominent big men, and they'd just spent the early part of that evening on May 9 battling against each other in the weekly open gym at Sinclair Community College.

Afterward, they had headed to a Salem Avenue Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, but when their car, as Hoover put it, "started puttering like it was running out of gas" — they'd pulled from the drive-through line into a nearby bank parking lot as the car "sputtered" to a stop.

Hoover called his Sandalwood Drive home for help, and his stepdad, Robert Powell, soon arrived with a gas can. Hoover got out, gave him money for fuel and then got back into the car, leaving the door open.

"Then all of a sudden I hear the noises — maybe four or five of them — and it sounded like gun shots," Hoover said. "I said to Aaron, 'You hear that?' And right then more bullets started hitting the car and glass started shattering.

"I told Aaron, 'Duck down!' And we both tried, but it's not that easy. I'm 6-11 (and about 270 pounds), and he's 6-9 and bigger than me. There wasn't a lot of room, and my (left) foot went out the door, and that's when it got hit.

"About the same time, Aaron goes, 'I'm shot! ... I'm shot!' And that's when I go, 'C'mon, we gotta get out of here.'

"I don't know if it was adrenaline or just survival, but I started hobbling away as fast as I could, and I looked over my shoulder, and Aaron was right there behind me holding his side. He headed to the KFC, and I went across the street, then tried to get back, but finally I just sat down on the curb. I couldn't go no more."

A KFC worker made the 911 call. Police arrived, and a short time later, Hoover's stepdad and a buddy returned.

"If you could see what I did when we drove up," Powell recalled Thursday afternoon. "My heart just dropped. The car was filled with bullet holes, and I couldn't find my son."

By then, Hoover and Pogue had been put into separate ambulances headed to Miami Valley Hospital.

"A lady was putting an IV in me, and I just kept asking her about Aaron," Hoover said. "She told me he'd been shot in the chest, and that's all I could think about.

"People always tell us we both got bright futures, but all I could think about was his. I didn't know how bad he was hurt, and no one would tell me. I just wanted to be sure Aaron would be OK."

Pogue — the center for two-time state Division II champion Dunbar High School who two days before the shooting had announced he was headed to Vincennes (Ind.) University next year — has a 9 mm bullet lodged in his chest cavity, not far from his spine. He's been up walking, but he's still in Miami Valley Hospital, which has been instructed by the Pogue family not to release his condition.

The 25-year-old Hoover — a Belmont High graduate whose roller-coaster career includes two recent seasons at Sinclair Community College after working several jobs around Dayton and single-semester stops at Clark State and Jacksonville (Texas) College, neither of which included playing basketball — has a bullet in his left foot.

Wednesday night, he returned to Sinclair's open gym, where — wearing a walking boot and on crutches — he watched a pickup game in progress and talked about what had happened.

Hoover said doctors told him he should make a "100 percent recovery." He's heard the rumors that have circulated: "People say we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we were just waiting for gas and then we were going to get our food and go home. People say we were doing something we weren't supposed to, but they don't know me and they don't know Aaron."

He said he has "no idea" who shot him or why, and Thursday, Dayton police were saying the incident appears to be a random shooting.

Contrary to what you might think, Hoover said, "I don't feel hatred toward whoever shot us. I'm not gonna get caught up in some kind of revenge; that makes me just like whoever shot at us.

"I'm not gonna get emotional and cry all the time, either. This may sound funny, but I'm not gonna let this define me in any bad way. I'm just not. I'm gonna get on with my life and work even harder in basketball."

Powell said he hopes that's the case: "Physically, they say Dorian should be fine, but mentally you just never know when someone has been shot. He's putting up a good front, but you can see little signs that it's affected him and that ..."

Powell became silent for a few seconds, then vented what many of those closest to his stepson and Pogue are feeling:

"These are two good kids — they don't do drugs, drink or smoke; they just play basketball — and then this happens. I believe somebody was shooting specifically at that car. Maybe the car looked like somebody else's or maybe it was just random, but it doesn't matter. It's a sad sign of the times. That's how minds work now. If you don't get caught, you don't worry about consequences."

Sinclair coach Jeff Price — who said Hoover has drawn interest from several Division II colleges, especially California University of Pennsylvania — was troubled by the same thought:

"We live in a very random society now. That was proven in the Virginia Tech shootings, and you see it almost any time you watch the news now.

"Two kids trying to do the right thing shouldn't have to run for their lives. But there's just so little regard for that now. These are scary times."

As much as Dorian Hoover doesn't want this to be a defining moment, it is.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156

or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com.