Gunshot victim Brinkley renews NFL quest

THE NIGHT IT happened, Margie Cason had just seen her grandson, Curtis Brinkley. He had left her house to pick up his sister from work. But what happened then was so strange: There she was, typing away at her computer, when suddenly she broke out in a deep sweat. She became dizzy, feeling as if she was going to pass out, and called upstairs to her son to bring her a glass of water. Her son said she should go lay down. But as she went to do just that, the telephone rang: A hysterical voice on the phone told her that Curtis had been shot.

It occurred on a dark street in Elkins Park at 12:02 a.m. July 10, as Brinkley sat behind the wheel of a parked car waiting for his sister, Niveka Cason, to come out of the adult-care center where she worked. Someone approached him and began firing a .357 Magnum revolver. Three rounds were discharged, but Brinkley later remembered it seemed as if there were more. Two of the bullets slammed into his shoulder - one became lodged inside of him and another went through him. The third round grazed his side. "It was the noise that scared me," Brinkley says now. "That and knowing that the bullets were intended to hit me."

As that inexplicable anxiety swept through his grandmother, Brinkley became engulfed in a struggle for his life. He ducked out of the line of fire, and let the car roll backward until the shooting stopped. Oddly, he says he was not in any pain at that point - that would come later. But as he called the police on his cell phone and drove to a nearby gas station, he could feel himself slipping in and out of consciousness. He would remember later: "I tried to stay as calm as possible. But there was so much blood."

Philadelphia police took him to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where Brinkley remembers asking the nurses: "Am I going to be able to play football again?" A 2004 West Catholic High graduate who still holds the city-league record for season and career rushing yardage, Brinkley had been signed last spring by the San Diego Chargers as a rookie free agent. The 5-10, 213-pound running back from Syracuse had impressed the Chargers during his offseason workouts with them. On the very day of the shooting, he had been scheduled to leave for a vacation in Miami before reporting to preseason camp on July 26. Suddenly, everything had changed.