At 5 a.m. the day after the NBA all-star game George Petraski found himself at Ground Zero

By Joe Schoenmann

Friday, March 2, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

The crack of 9 mm bullets that mangled his friend's spine keeps George Petraski awake at night. When asked to, he will relive it. But he stops often, squeezing his lips, fighting tears.

"We had just gotten everybody out, and they started fighting in the middle of the street, about 40 of them," says Petraski, a giant of a man with hands the size of baseball mitts.

"All of a sudden I hear BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! ... Everyone was running out the back door. I get to the front. People are running down the street toward the Palms. And there's Tom and Aaron. Blood everywhere."

Over four nights in mid-February, Las Vegas hosted the NBA All-Star Game as a way to prove the city deserves a franchise. Although the carefully planned seduction of NBA Commissioner David Stern seemed to work, the four days resulted in 403 arrests and hundreds of complaints from service-industry workers furious at the disrespect they felt from many visitors who came for the festivities.

Then, during what might be called the very last gasps of another four-day party, around 5 a.m. Feb. 19, an unidentified gunman shot three people at Minxx, a strip club on Wynn Road a few blocks northeast of the Orleans.

Two of the wounded, Aaron Cudworth, an ultimate fighter working as a Minxx security guard, and an unnamed woman identified as a dancer, were hospitalized and later released.

Tom Urbanski remains in intensive care. With a bullet in his diaphragm, doctors told his family he is paralyzed from the waist down.

Petraski, a manager at the club, grew up in the shadow of the Chicago's Comiskey Park and speaks in unmistakable South Side-ese: Think "da Bears" for "the Bears."

The former professional wrestler had gone by "The Russian Brute," and won a tag-team wrestling championship in Kansas with Urbanski in 1993.

On that Monday, he was at ground zero as the fight began inside the club.

In an interview with the Sun, he described what happened, the chaos, and how he threatened to break the fingers of a football player's bodyguard to get him out of the club in the minutes before the shooting. Petraski also explained why he feels responsible for what happened to Urbanski, his best friend, and a man he now says will be in his care for as long as Urbanski needs him.

"He'd only gotten (to the club) 10 minutes earlier, and I told him to stand by the front door," Petraski says, his voice choking. "I never wanted anybody to see me cry. I'm a big guy, but it happens because of the sorrow and the pain. And it just bothers me because what's happening in my head is, I told the guy to stay there, you know? I should have been there. That was supposed to be me."

"Harlem Knights" was the brainchild of an outside promoter. It had gone swimmingly for the first three of its four-day stay at Minxx Gentlemen's Club & Lounge, a strip club that opened in November. Professional sports figures had shown up, paying the entrance cover charge of $200.

Then "he came," Petraski said, "and brought his dark cloud with him."

"He" is football player Adam "Pacman" Jones of the NFL's Tennessee Titans. Jones has been questioned by police investigators but not charged in connection with the shooting.

People working at the club, however, including co-owner Robert Susnar, have publicly challenged Jones to turn in the gunman, because they are convinced he is one of the men at Jones' side most of the night.

Harlem Knights was a good event, Susnar says. Houston strip club operator Chris Mitchell organized it, splitting the $200 cover charge down the middle with Minxx.

As part of the deal, about 200 strippers from out of state - most from Houston - contracted with Minxx. The club gave them referrals so they could get their Clark County sheriff's cards, which permitted them to dance.

Petraski says that the scene was not pleasant. He warned his friends to stay away for the weekend. "I just wanted to get Monday over with so we could start all over on Tuesday." Part of the bad vibe he felt came from the dancers, whom he described as "pigs."

"I mean 'pigs' in the way they conducted themselves," Petraski says. "They threw stuff on the floor, spat on the floor. The dressing rooms were in disarray. I actually videotaped the rooms, that's how bad it was. I wanted to show the owner.

"Even the house mom (in charge of maintaining the dressing room) didn't want to be in there. She was petrified the whole night."

Sunday night Jones showed up with seven people. Jones described them to Petraski as his entourage.

From the start Jones was behaving in ways that put the staff on edge.

"As soon as he came in, he was questioning the prices. 'I want this, I don't want that.' He started moaning and crying and complaining, you know how spoiled rich people are."

Petraski said Jones and his group purchased about eight bottles of champagne. He says Jones' bodyguard poured a glassful for Jones and he downed it quickly. The bodyguard poured another, and Jones downed it quickly. And so it went.

The night wore on without incident. Then the rap singer Nelly, whose real name is Cornelius Haynes Jr., decided he wanted to "make it rain" on the stage. Popularized in at least two hip-hop songs, making it rain means throwing dollar bills into the air as strippers gyrate and whirl beneath them.

Petraski had been in the office when Nelly's assistant walked in, and hit him in the chest with a bundle of large bills. "She says, 'We want this in ones.' I threw it back at her. 'Change it yourself. You don't throw that in my chest, you don't even know who I am.' "

After getting change, Nelly showered dollar bills on the stage.

Jones decided to follow suit. Susnar says Jones had about $3,500 in one-dollar bills - not $81,000 as others have suggested because it was the amount police later found in Mitchell's Silverton hotel room.

The $3,500 didn't create the same amount of rain as Nelly's money, but the dancing continued. The strippers started picking up the money and Jones got angry, Susnar said. He grabbed a dancer by the hair and threw her down.

He wasn't mad because the dancers took the money, Susnar says. Jones was upset that they took it before he had given his permission. "That's some big hip-hop thing," Susnar says.

Petraski was upstairs. Then the music stopped. He stepped out of the office and noticed the DJ quietly slipping out the back door with his computer equipment in his arms.

Petraski says he went downstairs and found Jones holding down a dancer by her hair. "Then he starts to go after one of my guys."

Petraski grabbed Jones' bodyguard, who was holding Jones so tightly that when Petraski started pulling the bodyguard toward the exit, Jones came with them.

Then Jones broke loose and walked up to one of the security guards and said, "I'm going to kill you and all the security guards," Petraski says.

"He said it to another guard, not me. If he'd have said it to me, I'd have smacked him."

Suddenly, a woman holding a sofa chair in front of her rushed Petraski. "I mean, it was a big chair. And she picks this up, and I threw it down. Then she was punching another guard, so I hooked her up and told someone else to hold her, because I didn't want (Jones') bodyguard to get away."

Petraski tried to take the bodyguard out of the club, but says he grabbed a brass rail and wouldn't let go. "So I called him a sissy. I said, 'You're nuttin' but a big 450-pound sissy.' I said, 'I'm going to break your fingers if you don't let go.' And he didn't let go, so I started to bend them back. Then he let go."

After forcing the bodyguard outside, Petraski says he reentered the club to find Jones sitting on the stage, arms folded, angry. Another fight broke out. A woman in a bright orange wig rushed Petraski and tried to break the gold chain around his neck. Petraski says he grabbed her "Three Stooges-style," and they both went headfirst into the door and outside the club.

He went inside again, and she came running after him. "And I mean running running. I clothesline her. She goes down, I pick her up and throw her out again."

As the place finally started to quiet down, Petraski ushered others in the club out a side door because he didn't want to put them with Jones and others out front. The side door shut behind him and locked automatically.

That's when he heard the shots in the front. He found Tom "lying on his back and I said, 'Tom, Tom, what's the matter?'

"'I've been hit, I've been hit.'

"He gives me his phone. 'Call my wife - I can't feel my legs.' "

Susnar says the gunman fired from behind a palm tree roughly 15 feet from the front door.

Petraski says Urbanski was hit four times and Cudworth twice. A bulletproof pane at Minxx's entrance bears the telltale crack of a 9 mm slug that missed its mark.

"I cannot feel worse that people were injured," Susnar says. "I would be willingly take either of their places. You have no idea what great people these are. I mean, in reality, it's a rather trivial business. We're not manufacturing anything, we're not really helping people. It's a trivial business. And for someone to be injured or, or paralyzed, over ego?"

Petraski doesn't sleep much now. He refuses to be drawn into any more talk about the shooting. His "fallen comrade" is his only concern.

"Every time I talk to someone, I get teary-eyed, because it bothers me, you know? And when I go home, I can't look at our wrestling tapes because then I'm really going to get mad and get upset, and it's not healthy. Like you said, I gotta go talk to somebody."

He says he expects to move in with Urbanski, who was working at the club to help put his wife, a Clark County teacher, through law school. "I can't accept that he's paralyzed, I can't think of him not runnin' with me again. Tom? Not running? I can't think that way, I don't want no one else to think that way. Until he tells me he's paralyzed, that's how I'll look at it."

Talking fast and with little sleep, Petraski swings from maudlin talk about what his buddy is thinking while in a coma to giggling at the memories the two have had.

"He's my hero," he says of Urbanski. "He's got this relationship with his wife, they're so cute together, they have pet names for each other. I just really admire what they do, how they prop each other up."

And just like that, his eyes well with tears. He wonders if Urbanski, in his coma, is thinking the same thing. "You know, he might see me and say, 'It's all your fault, you told me to stay by the door.' Or he might say, 'My brother, I love you.' "

Wednesday Urbanski came out of his coma. The two longtime friends finally met again.

Urbanski tried to talk. Petraski brought their tag-team championship belt.

"I told him we're going to be frolicking in the daisies in a few months. We're going to make a comeback in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), we're going to talk to the WWE people and get this going again."

Urbanski's body shook as he tried to speak.

"I said, 'Tom, try not to talk. We got a lot of time to talk about all of this. Take it easy. I'm all right. My concern is you.' "

Tears streamed down Urbanski's face. His wife cried as she wiped his tears.

Petraski broke down.