Anyone who has been a regular reader of the Durham police log in The Herald-Sun raised their eyebrows the other day when they finally learned where in Durham UNC basketball player P.J. Hairston was arrested for marijuana possession and driving without a license: 1499 Holloway Street.
You see, Holloway Street, Driver Street, and Liberty Street show up almost daily in the police log. If you’re in Durham to enjoy Durham’s downtown renaissance, you’re not going to find it there. This area is ground zero for prostitution, drug deals, and random shootings.
Yesterday, Joe Ovies, on his 99.9 FM The Fan radio show, abruptly and rudely cut off a caller who was in the process of pointing out this history of Holloway Street. Ovies, who has been running interference for Hairston since news of the arrest broke, downplaying it as non-news that a college kid would smoke a little weed, responded sniffily, “I’ve been to Holloway Street. It’s a long street.”
It may be, but 1499 is about dead-center of the nefarious activity that shows up in the cop log, only two blocks from Driver and one block from Liberty. Why do you think the cops set up a checkpoint there? And today’s latest news about the arrest knocks some huge kinks in Ovies’ benign interpretation:
According to the incident report, police stopped Hairston and two passengers at 10:20 p.m. on Wednesday during a license checkpoint at 1499 Holloway Street in Durham. Police during the stop discovered marijuana, a 9mm handgun, a magazine with nine rounds of ammunition, plastic baggies, three cigars and a rental car agreement.
My first reaction to hearing the location of the arrest was that Hairston was just asking for trouble if he was hanging around that area of town, and that the coaches at UNC need to instruct their players to avoid it. I didn’t know about the gun or the rental car.
Hairston may have been an innocent passenger hanging around with the wrong people. Who knows. But hanging around Driver, Liberty, and Holloway in Durham is not a smart thing to do, and radio sports talk people should be more open to callers who have more information on an issue than they do.
