Today, there was supposed to be a 23rd-birthday celebration for a young man who didn't make it past 22. Barbecue, cake, music, memories. But lately some wild stuff has been happening in the dead man's neighborhood, wild even by the measure of this tough community -- his brother shot one night, more shooting the next night, another brother running from bullets the morning after.
Now it's too dangerous to commemorate the birth of the dead man, last year's shooting victim. It's so dangerous that his family has temporarily fled. What's left is the dead man's story: the tale of an undervalued life, ended because of a dispute about an overvalued jacket.
But first, it's about one December morning.
* * *
On the day he died, Lee Marshall arrived for work at 8 a.m. and offered to buy his mentor breakfast. Carl Straughn was succeeding where many adults had failed -- he was helping the 22-year-old envision a future beyond the perilous allures of street life.
As an air conditioning and heating technician at Brookland Manor apartments in Northeast Washington, Straughn taught Marshall, a maintenance trainee, how to do minor repairs on units. He schooled him on induction motors and pressure gauges, but also on establishing good credit and taking pride in his work. A high school dropout, Marshall obtained certificates in building maintenance and in refrigeration, heating and air conditioning from Prince George's Community College. Some nights, after hours, since Marshall lived in the neighborhood, tenants sought him out to fix their furnaces. His confidence was up and his eyes sparkled whenever he verbalized his dream: "the Lee Marshall Air Conditioning & Heating Service."
"He felt like he was really helping people," says Straughn. "I saw the enthusiasm in him."
Straughn, who'd already eaten, declined Marshall's treat of breakfast. A little after 10 a.m., Marshall was sent to open an apartment building door for co-worker Otto Caballeros, who had a kitchen sink to snake. He asked Marshall if he wanted to share a Hershey bar. "No, man, that's a rich man's chocolate," Marshall quipped, and left. Less than 10 minutes later, Caballeros heard four or five shots.
Joann Marshall heard them, too.
"Pow-pow-pow!"she recalls. She sits in the living room of her second-floor Brookland Manor apartment on 14th Street NE, reliving how she reacted that day, Dec. 30, 2004. She lifts the blinds and peers out the window.
"Delante!" she remembers screaming, referring to her then 18-year-old son, who she knew was outside. But when she saw Delante darting from the nearby liquor store -- whole, unhurt -- she let out another scream.
"Lee!"
A Jacket to Die For