Authorities eventually discovered a .45-caliber pistol loaded with four rounds of ammunition, but it was found in the bed of another coach's pickup - not McCown's or Ellerbe's. A police report said McCown was identified as the suspect by the picture on his coaching ID card, but it didn't say who identified him. Authorities have not disclosed whom the gun was registered to.
McCown was initially taken to the Montgomery County jail, charged with assault and other offenses. But the state's attorney's office soon deferred to federal authorities, who charged him with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. While the offense carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence, McCown's record could earn him a much longer term if he is convicted.
Three weeks later, federal marshals woke McCown at his Baltimore rowhouse and drove him to a detention center in Charles County.
The league suspended the Gators for a week - no Gators team advanced far in the playoffs -- and fined them $1,000.
And everyone was left wondering about the coach who was a felon.
Filling a need
Aaron McCown appears in a prison jumpsuit with orange and white horizontal stripes.
There is something childlike about him in the way he stares at the ground - almost shyly - as he approaches. He pushes his dreadlocks away from his face, sits down behind a thick glass window and picks up a phone to speak to his visitor.
It is early November, and McCown has been at the cinder-block detention center since the marshals showed up at his doorstep. A judge considered McCown too much of a community threat to grant him bail while prosecutors sort through his case.
His attorney, John Chamble, allowed The Sun to interview McCown on condition that he not be asked about his case.
McCown was eager to talk about coaching. The promise of coaching - he speaks of it as "a calling" - had helped sustain him years ago at Jessup. He said he would tell himself that when he got out he would intervene with troubled youths so they "don't go through what I've been through."
McCown knew there was a need for male mentors and considered himself well-suited. In other places, he says, coaching youths might be about football; in East Baltimore, he says, it's about plugging holes in kids' psyches.
Many of the Gators had home lives marred by absent parents and poverty. McCown says he didn't want them to feel defeated by their situations, to define themselves by the things they lacked.
