DATE: Tuesday, June 17, 1997                TAG: 9706170286

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:  107 lines

BASKETBALL COURT SHOOTING DEATH STUNS FRIENDS, FAMILY

The basketball court behind Simonsdale Elementary School always had been a favorite place for night games for Michael L. Hedge and his friends.

There was plenty of light from nearby street lamps, and it was peaceful.

That all changed Sunday night when four strangers showed up.

Hedge was shot several times after a dispute broke out over a game. He died a short while later at Maryview Medical Center. Police said Monday that they are investigating and that no arrests have been made.

Hedge's friend, now an eyewitness who does not want his name published, doesn't remember feeling threatened or worried when the teen-agers showed up.

Two of them looked like they were 14 or 15, the friend said. The other two were slightly older.

They came up in a small, black car with a sunroof, he said.

The friend said the teen-ager who did the shooting looked the youngest. He described him as ``the little one.''

``It was just the little kid acting like he had an attitude,'' he said. ``The others were just having fun, playing ball.''

But a dispute broke out and before long all four were fighting Hedge, his friend said.

The friend tried to pull them off, and when they started trying to hit him, he said he kept telling them he was just trying to break it up.

``We don't want any trouble. We just want to leave,'' he remembers saying.

Hedge yelled at his friend to get their car. But one of the teens had yelled for someone to ``go get the heat or go get the gun or something,'' the friend said.

The friend's car was about 15 feet away, and the teens' car was another 20 or 30 feet in front of his, he said.

``I got to my car as the kid was bringing the gun back.''

At that point, he said, the others started saying ``No, put it down,'' he said.

``I don't believe that they wanted the kid to shoot,'' he said.

But he did.

Hedge's friend described the juvenile who shot Hedge as a black male with two loose corn rows that met at the back of his head.

Two of the teens were cousins, he said. He heard one of the four teens referred to him as Ron.

One of the shots pierced Hedge's heart, according to his mother, Debra Miller.

The friend said he heard five shots. With the last shot, the gunman was so close that Hedge reached out and knocked the gun out of his hand.

Hedge then slumped into the car, and his friend pulled off.

``I didn't know what I was feeling,'' the friend said. ``I felt like I wasn't really there, but it was still happening, and I didn't know what to do.''

He remembers Hedge saying he couldn't see, and at one point he said he was dying.

``I just kept trying to tell him things like you're going to pull through this, you're going to be all right.''

He said he now doesn't know why, but he drove to Hedge's girlfriend's home about two minutes away.

``I didn't even think when I was doing it,'' he said. ``I just ended up there.''

The girlfriend told him to get him to the hospital fast and met them there.

But Hedge died shortly after getting to the hospital, before his mother could talk to him again.

A nurse told her the last thing her son said was he didn't want to die.

``They took his life away from him over a stupid basketball game,'' she said.

Miller said her son had graduated from Wilson High School last year.

He had been on his own for about eight months, living in an apartment on Navajo Trail.

A neighbor across the street said the only noise he heard from Hedge was when a paint truck would stop and honk for him to come out for work, sometimes seven days a week.

He worked hard, his mother said, and was really taking pride in paying his bills and saving money. He had just bought his girlfriend, Dawn Hobbs, an engagement ring, his mother said.

``You don't expect to have to worry that somebody's going to shoot him over a basketball game,'' Miller said. ``It's just supposed to be a game.''

At least 50 or 60 people showed up at the hospital after hearing about the shooting, his friend said.

On Monday, his girlfriend and other friends put flowers and his picture at the basketball court.

``He's somebody that really didn't deserve to die,'' the friend said. ``He's a good person. Nobody disliked him.''

On Monday, neighbors of the tight-knit, middle-class Simonsdale community waited to hear more about the shooting.

Karen Jordan, president of the Simonsdale Civic Club, had been contacted by the neighborhood police officer and had fielded phone calls from residents wanting updates.

It's not a neighborhood accustomed to dealing with violence, Jordan said.

Her own sons go there to play basketball sometimes until 10 or 11 at night, she said.

``I never, never thought of it,'' she said of the possibility that one of those games could end in bloodshed. ``That area and that ballpark have thousands of kids who go up there, and we've never had any kind of shooting or any kind of problems.''

L. Pettis Patton, director of leisure services for the city, also was stunned by the shooting.

``The spot is heavily used by youth within our city,'' Patton said. ``We've never had an incident there of any kind of violence.'' MEMO: Anyone with information on the shooting should call the Portsmouth

Police Department's detective bureau at 393-8536 or Crime Line at

488-7777. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Michael L. Hedge KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING

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