Piercing Bystanders' Innocence

"The randomness of that bullet hitting me, that made me realize God had a plan. And it was to get out," she said recently, as she visited her mother in Northeast Washington's Trinidad neighborhood. "It may have helped me get where I am, but I don't want it following me. I don't want people to think less of me. I don't want people to look at me and think, 'Black, inner-city, ghetto.' "

Ruffins was 10 on that evening in September 1988 when a bullet slammed into her calf as she took a break from playing jump-rope outside her home. At a time when the District was beginning to develop a reputation as a "murder capital," the incident received little media attention.

"It wasn't like 'Ten-year-old shot playing double Dutch' was all over the news," she said. "It was just a guy who came to deal drugs in my neighborhood and his bullet hit me. I wasn't killed, so nobody else really cared about it."

But, despite being as young as she was, Ruffins found herself "really angry" about what had happened. As her mother, Diane Jones, threw herself into community cleanup efforts, Ruffins kept her head down and studied hard. When it came time to go to college, she chose a distant school -- Ohio University in Athens, where she did not always tell people she was from the District.

"When I came home to visit, " she said, "I remember the nights with the National Guard all over our neighborhood. There were these military trucks everywhere. Big lights shining. That would never stop the drug dealing for more than one day, though."

These days, Ruffins is visiting her home town more often as she plans a fall wedding in the District to another Ohio University student. She is close to receiving a doctorate in special education. She talks about having a house with a pool someday -- but not in Washington.

"It was my mother who raised me, not this environment," she said. " . . . My mom, she's been here since I was 8 years old. And it's very painful to watch everything go bad or not get better here."

'I Feel Like I Messed Up'

Lonnie Eaton does not volunteer many details about his role in what happened that day. He was 13. It was a hot afternoon in June 1993, and suddenly there was a barrage of gunfire. When it was over, six children playing in the Benning Park community swimming pool in Southeast had been shot, though none fatally.

Eaton, who will turn 24 this month, was the youngest of three people arrested but the only one convicted in the high-profile case, which drew an outcry from then-President Bill Clinton. Charges were dropped against a 23-year-old suspect, and a 17-year-old was cleared of charges.

"I was really just following along with the things that were happening out there that day," he said in a recent telephone interview from the Federal Correctional Complex at Petersburg, Va., where he is locked up on unrelated drug charges. "I ain't trying to put the crime on no one else, for real. It was my fault, what I did. I was out there. That day, I was standing on the corner, and the other dudes started shooting at us. I did what I had to do."

According to police, Eaton was a member of the Simple City Crew from the Benning Terrace area. That day, he and his "brother figures," as he called them, had a beef with a member of the Eastgate Gang, which was based about a mile away in Marshall Heights.

"I was just 13 when it all happened," he said. "I didn't even understand what the trial was all about. I was an angry little kid back then. I feel like I messed up."

Eaton cannot say exactly where he went wrong. He praised his mother, who always supported him and his five siblings, he said. But his father was in and out of the household, and disappeared altogether when Eaton was 16. "I ran into my father when we were both locked up in the D.C. jail," he said. "We bumped into each other. He hugged me and he asked me how I was doing. But that's about it with my father."

Eaton served his time for the shooting at the Oak Hill Youth Center and at a juvenile facility in Colorado, he said, where counseling helped him accept responsibility for his actions. When he was released in 1998, he had received his high school diploma, and for a while he did well in a landscaping job. But he was arrested last year for possession of drugs with intent to distribute. When he is again released, scheduled for next month, he hopes to do better.