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Way before Draya was on the Basketball Wives: LA she was just known as a model who had dated Chris Brown. It was a little bit after their breakup that the child endangerment accusations came to light.
Draya has FIERCELY denied the accusations. Blaming blogs and others of producing a false police report. We produced the full police report and Draya’s plea deal. You can read it here via PDF form.
This has become the central theme of the Basketball Wives: LA reality show. In the interim two nude photos of Draya have been leaked to the media.
No one would probably even know about Draya’s arrest if not for reporter Steve Henshaw. Henshaw was the journalist from the little known ReadingEagle.com that originally broke the story about Andraya M. Howard aka Draya Michele. If you are unfamiliar with what he wrote on that fateful day in Mid-January here it is.
A 7-year-old Wyomissing boy was coming home from school to an empty apartment and spending nights alone while his mother worked in Philadelphia, borough police said Friday.
The boy told police that he would get off the bus most days and wait for someone to leave or enter the gated parking garage under the apartment complex in the 100 block of North Park Road so he could get into the building, police said.
His mother, Andraya M. Howard, 25, would leave the apartment door unlocked and microwave dinners in the freezer for him, they said.
Police arrested Howard at the apartment Thursday night on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.
The apartment looked like it had been ransacked, with women’s undergarments scattered throughout the living room. A small dog was in a cage, and dog feces and dog urine were in several places in the apartment.
While Quinter talked to the boy, the youth got a TV dinner from the freezer, stood on the counter and put it into the microwave.
Howard, who said she worked as a model, returned home about 8:45 a.m. and police told her that her son was in the care of the county Children and Youth Services while they investigated.
(video: Draya working the stripper pole)
They charged Howard on Dec. 30, but did not immediately arrest her because she agreed to surrender to sheriff’s deputies.
When she didn’t, police went to the apartment and arrested her.
Draya denies that she has ever been arrested and has ever put her child in harms’ way. Since Henshaw is the source report he feels like this is a slap in the face and wanted to clear his name.
Here is what he had to say about his reporting of the story and the follow up story he posted on September 16th 2011, adding more facts to back up his original claims.
This item was published in the 9/16/11 edition of the Eagle about Howard’s court case. The article I wrote was based entirely on the police report (the affidavit of probable cause) that I had in hand. After Howard’s mother called to complain that the story was inaccurate, I called the police officer and he said the story was very accurate.
Howard’s entering ARD status is tantamount to a guilty plea. Why would a judge order her to 40 hours of family counseling if he/she didn’t believe that what the police officer reported he saw/heard was true? Andraya Howard shows her character when she accuses the police and the paper of making up facts after she has under oath before a judge accepted the punishment.
There is a fundamental question that has been asked since all this came to light.
Is any of this our business, since we all have skeletons in our closet? That is a fair question, but with one fundamental flaw.
The day Draya signed on the dotted line to be on the Basketball Wives: LA, she gave up a portion of her privacy to be a “celebrity”. There is always a price for celebrity, the bigger the fame, the bigger the price.
Her second mistake has been lying about what happened.
Everyone has seen “8 Mile” with Eminem correct? Em was having a bad couple of days. He was having problems at work, he lives in a trailer, he choked up in his rap battle, he doesn’t have any money, he sees his lady sleeping with his main competitor and then he gets beat up in front of his daughter.
When he goes to the final freestyle battle he appears to be beaten and broken, but then he does something unusual he raps about all his problems. He acknowledges all his flaws while cleverly pointing out his opponents flaws (the guy who slept with his girl and beat him up).
When his opponent takes the mic, he has nothing he can use against him, because Em has put it all out in the open.
The rest of the Basketball Wives: LA really aren’t in a position to judge or talk about Draya’s lifestyle considering all of them are bitter older ladies with cemeteries in their closet, but Draya allows it by keeping up this one lie.
Just go Eminem on them Draya and they will have nothing else to say.