Younger brother of former Terp Dino Gregory Jr. shot, injured stopping man who started driving his car into large Seattle crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters
Dan Gregory is reportedly in stable condition after being shot in the upper arm, has surgery Monday
Former Maryland basketball player Dino Gregory Jr. was at home with his wife in Seattle when she heard news that “a 27-year-old male” had been injured at one of the city’s Black Lives Matter protests that have been held there and throughout the country following the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Gregory, whose father Dino Sr. was a longtime Baltimore police officer before his death in 2014, knew his brother had attended a few of the protests in the Capital Hill section of the city. Gregory initially tried to convince himself that the age of the unnamed injured protester was simply a coincidence.
“I thought, ‘it can’t be him’, but then a picture came out and my wife said, ‘Don’t be alarmed, but I think that’s Dan,’” Gregory recalled in a telephone interview Monday.
”It was Dan and I’m thinking he got hit by a car. The news said he was in stable condition and I’m thinking he broke a leg or broke an arm or something like that.”
It turned out to be much different.
“When I saw the video, it was like a movie,” Gregory Jr. said. “It was crazy.”
Shortly after arriving at Harborview Hospital, Gregory found out that his younger brother had been shot in the upper arm, near his right shoulder. Dan Gregory, who moved out to Seattle in January, was injured when he tried to stop an armed man who was driving his car into the crowd of protesters.
“Once he saw what was happening, he just went, he just knew people were going to get hurt,” Gregory Jr. said Monday. “Thank God he did that. This could have been a totally different conversation we’re having right now. Thank God it didn’t happen and he saved hundreds of peoples’ lives.”
Gregory Jr. said that his brother underwent surgery Monday and remains in stable condition. He could be released from the hospital as soon as Tuesday.
The man, who was later arrested by police, was shown on video taken by a local news outlet getting involved in a scuffle with Daniel Gregory and shooting him as Gregory tried to slow the car down. The man then got out of his car and brandished the gun, causing most in the crowd to run away. He then took off in a different direction.
Dino Gregory Jr. asked his younger brother what made him react the way he did.
“He kept saying, ‘I had to save those people,’” Gregory Ir. said.
”He said, ‘I was sitting down eating a hot dog and he was coming fast, he was trying to hurt those people. I didn’t think about it. I just went.’ He grabbed the steering wheel and then the guy ended up stopping and reached for his gun, pulled it and shot him.”
Gregory said that his brother had been out for “about four nights” of the protests. Knowing his younger brother, the 30-year old Gregory said as shocking as the incident was for him to comprehend, it didn’t surprise him that Daniel Gregory put his life on the line.
“Obviously this is crazy, this whole situation (regarding George Floyd’s killing) is crazy, what happened (to his brother) is crazy, I could never imagine something like this could happen, but at the same time, Dan’s such a giving person, such a people person, he would sacrifice himself for somebody else,” Dino Jr. said.
“I couldn’t see this happening. Him doing this, I’m not surprised. I talked to my sister about it, I talked to my Mom about it. I’m not surprised he did that. That’s Daniel for you. He would jump in the way of a car for you. He kind of takes after my Dad. My Dad was the same way.”
The elder Gregory, who played basketball at Long Beach State under the legendary Jerry Tarkanian and was picked by the Washington Bullets in the fourth round of the 1982 NBA draft, became a policeman in Baltimore after a pro career in Europe was cut short by an injury.
“He would do anything for anybody,” Gregory Jr. said of his late father.
After running programs for youths at a local YMCA in Seattle, Gregory Jr. joined the Bellevue Police Department two months ago as a police support specialist in an administrative role. Having grown up in Baltimore, Gregory believes the killing of Floyd and its aftermath might finally be a time for policing nationwide to change.
Gregory moved to Seattle after his own professional career ended. A role player for most of his career at Maryland (2007-2011), Gregory played six years in Europe, half of it spent in Germany. It was there he met his wife, Meagan, a former All-American volleyball player at Washington State.
“When my Dad was alive, him being a police officer, he was still worried about us being safe, my mom the same thing, when we went out by ourselves,” Gregory Jr. said. “I know Dan and I talk about it, about a world where we feel going out and not worry about anything like that happening to us.”
Gregory called the confluence of the pandemic and the reaction to the killing of Floyd a “perfect storm”, saying it’s a “monumental time” for his generation and others whose voices might finally be heard.
“People are kind of stepping up and saying things so a change will come,” Gregory said. “Now what kind of change that will be, I’m not 100 percent sure. What should happen, I don’t know that either, but change should happen. Dan feels the same way. That’s why he was out there the way he was. I’m just proud of what he did. It was really cool to see.”
Gregory Jr. realizes that it could have ended much differently for his brother, and perhaps there was a guardian angel - their late father - looking after him.
“The spirit of my Dad was in Daniel yesterday,” Gregory Jr. said. “My mom prays all the time, I think prayers a big thing. A lot of different things. It’s a blessing.”
The younger Gregory was able to walk away from the potential tragic incident under his own power, and even conducted a brief interview as he was being attended to by medics and cheered by the crowd that had watched the scene unfold.
“I heard the gunshot go off in my arm,” he said in a video captured by Seattle journalist Alex Garland. “The whole thing was to protect the people down there.”
A GoFundMe page has raised over $200,000 of a requested $60,000 to help pay for Gregory’s hospital costs.