As traffic slowed on Interstate 76 early Saturday, a stranger flagged down a young suburban couple’s car and pleaded with them for help.
The man’s friend, pants legs and shoes soaked in blood, sat nearby on a concrete railing.
“He said, ‘This is Julius Hodge of the Nuggets. Can you give us a ride to the hospital?”‘ said the husband, who asked not to be identified. “He just looked like a normal man who was trying to help his friend. He was very, very polite but kind of in a rush. He spoke fast, but he spoke clearly.”
The man’s wife, who was driving, stopped the car.
Hodge, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall, hobbled to the couple’s Honda Civic and calmly stuffed himself into the small sedan. He immediately called his mother on his cellphone to tell her he had been shot but was going to survive.
The 22-year-old rookie guard collapsed after he reached the doors of North Suburban Medical Center in Thornton, according to the good Samaritans who picked him up. They asked that their names be withheld because the shooter has not been caught.
Hodge was driving along I-76 when he was shot three times in the legs by someone in a passing car. Hodge and his passenger, who has not been identified, had just left Club Paladium in Adams County.
The motive for the shooting remains under investigation, and no arrests were made Sunday, Adams County sheriff’s Sgt. Louis Dixon said. The Sheriff’s Department had been contacted by the couple who picked up Hodge and his friend, Dixon said.
Authorities are still looking for people involved in the shooting who may have been riding in an older, cream-colored Cadillac.
The young couple were on the way home to Frederick from Black Hawk when Hodge’s friend flagged them down about 2:15 a.m. on I-76 near Interstate 25.
A black BMW with its doors open was parked on the shoulder of I-76. The wife said she was “99 percent sure” it was Hodge’s car.
People in a car ahead of the couple had already turned down Hodge’s friend. When the friend approached their Civic, they agreed to take him and Hodge to the nearest hospital.
“You just kind of don’t think; you just act,” said the husband, a 23-year-old electrician who said he is a “big Nuggets fan” and goes to all the team’s games.
On the way to the hospital, the husband said, Hodge was calm and appeared sober. He made several cellphone calls, one of them to his mother, Mary Hodge.
“He was telling his mom he was going to the hospital,” the husband said. “He was very calm for a person who had been shot. He kept telling her, ‘Calm down. I am OK. You need to listen.”‘
At the hospital, the 22-year-old wife honked the horn while Hodge’s friend got out of the car to summon help.
The man and woman didn’t remember whether Hodge or his friend said anything to them before they left them at the hospital. They took their Civic to be cleaned Sunday because the back seat was spotted with blood.
Hodge’s brother, Steve, came to Denver from New York to be at his brother’s bedside. From the hospital room Sunday, Steve Hodge said his brother was doing fine and declined to elaborate.
Later Sunday, Julius Hodge was released from the hospital “and is expected to make a full recovery,” Nuggets spokeswoman Teri Washington said in a statement in which Hodge thanked supporters and family.
“I want to say a special thank you to the good Samaritan who showed the true character of Colorado people. I would love the opportunity to meet with her and express my gratitude personally,” the statement said.
Authorities said Hodge’s passenger was not wounded in the shooting but suffered some cuts and bruises. The Sheriff’s Department declined to release his name, but the couple said he did not appear to be a Nuggets player.
Club Paladium, on West 62nd Avenue near Pecos, is a hot spot for Nuggets players, including Carmelo Anthony, who rented the club for NBA All-Star Weekend last year. The Oasis strip club is also on the property.
Hodge decided to go to the Paladium on Friday night to visit a friend who is a musician, sheriff’s officials said.
On Sunday, Nuggets management disputed earlier reports that Hodge was accompanied by four other Nuggets players at Club Paladium.
According to a source close to the team, it’s more likely that Hodge and his friend went to Club Paladium on their own because several Nuggets players decided instead to see Nikki “Hoopz” Alexander at a LoDo nightclub. Alexander is a model best known as rapper Flavor Flav’s romantic pick on his VH-1 reality dating show, “The Flavor of Love.”
Staff writers Marc J. Spears and Adam Thompson contributed to this report.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
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