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Camden basketball star rises a decade after his mother's fatal shooting

At first, the T-shirts were big and baggy, and Rasool Hinson and his younger twin brothers would wear them as nightgowns.

Camden guard Rasool Hinson is a clutch player and a team leader with an "infectious" personality, a coach says. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)
Camden guard Rasool Hinson is a clutch player and a team leader with an "infectious" personality, a coach says. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)Read more

At first, the T-shirts were big and baggy, and Rasool Hinson and his younger twin brothers would wear them as nightgowns.

But now, Hinson is 6-foot-2 and a senior basketball standout for Camden High School, and the T-shirt with his mother's picture silk-screened on the front is short and snug for the strapping 17-year-old.

He still wears it sometimes, "just to remember her," he says.

It's not easy for Hinson to recall the day he and his brothers, Nasim and Nasir, lost their mother in one of the most heartbreaking and horrific cases of random violence to strike the streets of Camden.

It's not easy for him to talk about grabbing his little brothers out of the backseat of their mother's car and helping them out of a side window that had just been blown out by a bullet from an AK-47 assault rifle.

It's not easy for him to express what it was like to be 7 years old and running down the street holding both of his little brothers' hands and telling some stranger, "My mom got shot. She's dead."

It's not easy for anybody else to fully comprehend it, either.

"I'm so proud of that kid, I'm speechless," Chuck Richardson, a New Jersey state police trooper and volunteer assistant coach for the Camden basketball team, says of Rasool Hinson. "Everything he's been through, and he's turned out to be exactly the kind of kid you want to see - good student, good athlete, well-mannered, respectful."

Richardson and others close to the Hinson brothers shake their heads in wonder at the boys' progress in nearly a decade since their mother, Nadirah Hinson, was killed when she accidentally drove her car into the middle of a shootout near Line and Fifth streets in Camden on May 21, 2005.

Rasool Hinson is carrying a 3.8 grade point average - "All A's and one B," he says - at Met East, a magnet school from which students can play sports for Camden High.

Stars on the court

He is a top player for one of South Jersey's best basketball teams. He is averaging 10.9 points and 3.4 rebounds with a team-high 89 assists for a Camden squad that has a 21-6 record and has advanced to the second round of the South Jersey Group 2 tournament.

Nasim and Nasir Hinson, both 15, are top players for the Camden High School freshman basketball team - they were buzzing around the court and making plays on offense and defense during a recent victory over Cherry Hill East - and personal favorites of one of the city's most well-respected youth coaches.

"Those are my favorite kids in the whole world," said Don Polk, a former star at Camden High School, whose Below The Rim basketball organization has provided opportunities for hundreds of city youngsters for the last 10 years.

Polk, who played on some of the best teams in Camden history in the late 1980s, is overcome with emotion when he discusses the Hinson brothers.

"They never have complained, never have said a negative word," Polk said, his voice breaking. "Everything they went through, and they always have a smile on their face - crazy."

"It's Rasool. He showed his little brothers. He has been a great big brother to them."

'Horrific' scene

Nadirah Hinson, 25, was killed as she drove her Mitsubishi Mirage on Line Street on a late spring afternoon in 2005. She was on her way to pick up a friend and get dinner with her sons, according to her mother, Millicent Hinson.

A bullet from an AK-47 struck Nadirah Hinson in the head. The bullet entered the vehicle through the passenger side window, struck Hinson and exited the driver's side window, according to Marty Wolf, a sergeant in the Camden County prosecutor's office.

"It was pretty horrific," said Wolf, who was the lead investigator on the case as a member of the homicide unit of the prosecutor's office.

A witness told Wolf that one of Nadirah Hinson's sons told him, "My mom got shot. She's dead."

"That was Rasool," Wolf said.

Three arrested

Three men were arrested about a week later. Juan Cotto, then 26, and Eric Nunez, then 23, were charged with first-degree murder. Rasheef Wise, then 21, was charged with the attempted murders of Cotto and Nunez.

Cotto and Wise had gotten into a fistfight earlier in the day, and Cotto and his friend, Nunez, later tracked down Wise near Fifth and Pine streets, said Vincent P. Sarubbi, who was the Camden County prosecutor at the time.

Cotto fired a .38-caliber handgun across the street at Wise, and Nunez took an AK-47 out of the trunk, police reported at the time.

Wise returned fire with a 9mm handgun and started running north on Fifth, toward Line Street. As Wise was turning the corner, Nadirah Hinson was pulling up to a stop sign.

She entered the intersection as Nunez was firing the AK-47 at Wise, shattering the passenger-side window and killing her instantly.

"Nine times out of 10, the people that we deal with put themselves at risk," Wolf said. "This was different. That's why this one sticks with you - that and the boys.

"This was a totally innocent person, 25 years old, doing the right things."

Wolf said the car continued to move after Hinson was shot and crashed into a porch, deploying the air bags.

Rob Hinson, the highly successful football coach at Timber Creek High School and Nadirah Hinson's first cousin, was among the first members of the family to arrive on the scene to collect the boys.

Rob Hinson said the youngsters were "covered with blood and glass" in the living room of a neighborhood woman who had gathered them off the street and taken them into her home.

"She was like a little sister to me," Rob Hinson said of Nadirah Hinson. "She had a super personality, always smiling, making everybody laugh."

Cotto, now 36, pleaded guilty in February 2008 to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced that April to 14 years and one day in state prison, plus five years of parole supervision.

Eric Nunez, now 33, of Camden, pleaded guilty in February 2008 to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years in state prison and five years of parole supervision.

Wise pleaded guilty in July 2007 to a weapons charge and was sentenced in May 2008 to five years in state prison.

Wise was shot and killed in 2013. No arrests have been made in the case, said Andy McNeil, public information officer for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.

'Their mom is gone'

Millicent Hinson said Nadirah was her only child. She has raised her grandsons since the death of their mother.

"The hardest thing for these boys is they can't say the word 'mom,' " Millicent Hinson said. "I used to tell them, 'You can call me mom if you want.' But it's not the same. I'm their grandmom. Their mom is gone."

Millicent Hinson said she was able to raise the boys with help from her family and friends and with support from the boys' father, Rasool Jones, who has been serving time in prison on a drug charge for the last three-plus years.

"It was hard for them, especially at first," Millicent Hinson said of her grandsons. "I took them to doctors, therapists.

"They would ask me, 'Nana, what happened to our mom?' They got better. We had a lot of support, people around us who helped us."

Said Polk: "We take care of our own in this neighborhood."

Nadirah is buried in Harleigh Cemetery, off Haddon Avenue near the city's Parkside section. Millicent Hinson said she takes the boys to their mother's grave on Mother's Day and her birthday, Sept. 19.

"I'm OK with it, but I have to make sure my grandmom is all right," Rasool Hinson said of those visits. "She gets upset sometimes."

Camden junior Brad Hawkins, a star on the football and basketball teams, is one of Rasool Hinson's closest friends. He said Hinson doesn't talk often about the loss of his mother, except sometimes in the days following a visit to the cemetery.

"He said sometimes that makes him cry," Hawkins said.

A developing talent

Rasool Hinson is one of the more naturally talented basketball players in South Jersey. He can handle the ball deftly and score from inside on smooth drives to the basket and from the outside on jump shots.

He played one of the best games of his career with 15 points in a 50-46 loss to national power St. Anthony of Jersey City before a capacity-plus crowd in Camden's gymnasium on Jan. 24.

But he also has been an inconsistent player at times, reluctant to force the action. That has moved the Camden coaches to shout encouragement at him.

"I'm hard on him sometimes," said Camden assistant coach Vic Carstarphen, one of the fabled program's most accomplished former players and a standout at Temple in the early 1990s. "I ask a lot, and sometimes I find myself thinking about it, and I have to step back.

"I think about what this kid has been through. He knows that life isn't given. I'm yelling at him about basketball, and I think he knows life is about more than basketball."

Carstarphen calls Hinson a team leader with an "infectious" personality.

"He's that kid with that vibe around him," Carstarphen said. "[Teammates] gather around him."

Said Hawkins: "I love that kid. He always makes me laugh. He keeps it real, never lies."

Camden coach John Valore said Hinson is one of the team's most dependable players in clutch situations.

"Late in the game, I want him on the foul line," Valore said.

Rasool Hinson hopes to play basketball in college. He has drawn recruiting interest from Division II Wilmington University and Division III Rutgers-Newark, Valore said. He has thought of studying to become a physical therapist or sports trainer.

Carstarphen said Hinson's best days as a player are ahead of him.

"He won't be 18 until July," Carstarphen said. "He's still young, could really be a junior. He's going to get better and better."

Memories of his mother

Rasool Hinson said he has only vague memories of his mother. He recalls her buying a dog for the family. The boys named her Mia.

"We went to visit my dad's family in North Carolina, and, when we came back, that dog was waiting for us and so excited to see us," Rasool Hinson said.

He said he wished he could look in the stands and see his mother sitting next to his grandmother, who never misses a game, home or away.

"Every day, I wish my mother was here to see me play basketball and I could make her proud," Hinson said.

He said he is a naturally "happy person" who prefers to look forward rather than back because "that's which way you're going."

Still, he said he is motivated by the memory of his mother. He sees her picture "every day" on the stand in the family's neat middle room in their home on Spruce Street in South Camden.

Sometimes, he still wears that old T-shirt under his clothes.

"I know she wanted me to be successful in life, to treat people right," Hinson said. "I know I have to make her proud."

@PhilAnastasia

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