And in this corner, big trouble
By Barb Ickes | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 
 

It’s a bummer about the crack cocaine. If not for the drug charge, Antwun Echols might have been spared this fall from grace.

People want to like athletes, especially homegrown ones. But even the super middleweight contender from Davenport has a limited number of public passes. And now they’re spent.

It’s not entirely fair, either.

Echols has been shot twice that we know of. The first time was in a drive-by shooting in Davenport in 2003 in which a bullet grazed his armpit. His status as a victim became quickly tarnished, however, when he was arrested a month later with a gun in his car. He wasn’t licensed to have the gun or to drive the car.

Some people also may have held against him his lack of originality in defending himself against the weapon charge, which was: “The bottom line is the gun don’t belong to me.”

As lousy luck would have it, Echols was shot again Sunday. This time he took a bullet to the leg while trying to break up a fight outside the closed Save-A-Lot grocery store on East Locust Street in Davenport.

It seems his buddy was on the losing end of a fight with a man police identified as James Grant when Echols stepped in to break things up. That’s when Grant pulled a gun and shot the boxer, police say.

In some circles, Echols may have been considered a hero, having taken a bullet for a friend and all. But people didn’t see it that way. A guy can be in the wrong place at the wrong time only so many times. And you can drag out the old running-with-the-wrong crowd excuse only so many times before realizing maybe this guy is the wrong crowd.

Even if police hadn’t charged Echols with possession of crack cocaine, which the cops claim he had on him when he was shot, things smelled fishy.

For starters, what good ever happens in the parking lot of a closed grocery store, which happens to be right next door to a liquor store/convenience mart with an ominous reputation? In other words, what were Echols and his friend doing there and how did a fight start?

“They were very vague about what they were doing there,” Davenport police Capt. David Struckman said Monday.

Echols was less vague about his role in the incident, which Struckman said appears to be a truthful account. It seems the police have their hands on a surveillance video, which shows some of what happened.

“He (Echols’ friend, Stevie Hodges) was out cold,” the captain said. “The other guy dropped him.

“Echols stepped in and pushed him (Grant) and said, ‘We don’t need this crap.’ That’s what Echols claims he said.”

So, if not for the crack cocaine, the prior shooting, the gun possession, and the iffy circumstances in this shooting, maybe Quad-Citians would cut him some slack. But now we find out he was wanted on several outstanding warrants because of child support issues in Scott County. 

And there’s the bell.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.