Gilbert Arenas, after fielding questions about yet another fourth-quarter collapse, was asked about reports that the D.C. police are investigating the report that he had stored guns in a locked box in his locker at Verizon Center.
News of an NBA investigation broke on Christmas Eve, but at the time, and although Arenas had brought the guns to his locker — according to the guard to keep them away from his children — and later turned them over to team security requesting they hand them over to the police, word was that there was no criminal investigation going on.
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Now, however, the D.C. police released a statement to the Associated Press on Tuesday that they are investigating the circumstances around Arenas and his guns.
D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump, in the statement, said “Members of the Metropolitan Police Department are currently assisting the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia with an investigation into an allegation that weapons were located inside a locker room at the Verizon Center.”
Arenas said last week that he was fully cooperating with both the league and the authorities. Tonight he said the investigation actually began two weeks ago.
“They started investigating two weeks ago, you guys just found about it,” Arenas said. “They just wanted to know where I got them from and make sure they’re not dirty guns.”
Reporters asked if Arenas at any time showed the guns to anyone, and he — despite the protests of Wizards PR staff — said “Yes, I showed them to someone, I showed them to team security when I handed them to them and said give them to the police.”
Did he take the guns out of the locker room at any time? His reply: “Yeah, I took them out of this locker room. I had to take them out to get them out of here to give to security. You see they didn’t take the whole locker out of here.”
Arenas told me last week “I wouldn’t have brought them to D.C. had I known the rules. After my daughter was born, I was just like, I don’t need these anymore. I don’t want them around the kids. We are working with the league and the authorities.”
Arenas doesn’t seem to be too worried, but we’ll see how this plays out ….
