A Jacket to Die For?

So how does a label like North Face, which advertises in magazines such as Outside and National Geographic Adventure, catch on in urban communities?

"There's really no rhyme or reason how it starts," says Stuff magazine editor Jimmy Jellinek, a longtime connoisseur of hip-hop style. "A couple of dudes wear it in a video. The kids see it on MTV or BET, and all of a sudden the kids are wearing it."

Was it rapper Fat Joe, a North Face patron, who lent the brand street cred? Was it Ghostface Killah's video? Was it the North Face references on a Biggie Smalls track?

Company officials say they are clueless. Before North Face jackets became trendy, Eddie Bauer coats, Timberland boots, Air Jordan sneakers were so popular in some neighborhoods that kids were robbed, shot and stabbed for them as well.

"This is not a new story," says Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor of black popular culture at Duke University. While these fads are hardly confined to African American youth, Neal worries that too many young black men have been seduced by "this notion of ghetto celebrity," the idea that one's manhood is defined by material status symbols: clothes, cars, jewels. In some neighborhoods, Neal observes, "people will go to great lengths to acquire even a trinket."

William Shelton knows this firsthand. As community relations coordinator for Brookland Manor and a resident, he has been mentor, surrogate father, employer, a resource for many of the neighborhood youngsters. Lee Marshall was among them.

"There is something wrong when young people think a piece of clothing is more valuable than a life," says Shelton. "The world exists on another level, and in our communities you see young people looking good but they're going nowhere. These are young people getting dressed up for each other."

'You Brought It on Yourself, Mo'

Spring arrived and gradually the North Face coats disappeared from the streets. A sweltering summer descended, and still no arrest of Lee Marshall's killer.

Shelton's community relations office is on the second floor of an apartment building on 14th Street, between Joann Marshall's building and the corner where Lee was killed. It serves as a neighborhood clearinghouse for employment and social services referrals, tutoring and other needs. Shelton often hands out third chances to people who have squandered their second.

A large man with an inviting smile, he's as comfortable in his skin as any black man who dares to wear an argyle sweater can be. He seems wiser than his age of 35.

In spring 2004, Lee Marshall came to him after a four-month jail stint for violating his probation on weapons offenses. Marshall, Shelton felt, didn't have the best of reputations but was often misunderstood. He liked clubbing and sometimes wound up in fights at nightspots. His criminal highlight reel included charges of unlawfully possessing a machine gun and intent to distribute cocaine. Authority was a problem for him, and so was motivation. In violating the conditions of his probation, he failed to re-enroll in high school, pursue a General Equivalency Diploma or find employment. Office visits to his probation officer were sporadic, and he tested positive for drugs.

During a stay in a halfway house in 2001, Marshall was observed pouring alcohol into a Coke bottle while outside taking a smoke, according to court records. Told to get rid of it, Marshall later got someone to toss the bottle up to a third-floor window. That little piece of defiance earned him five days in D.C. Jail.

And yet there was this other side to him.

"My thing is, there's good in everybody," says Tanya Calloway, his godmother.

Calloway, a D.C. public school teacher, had custody of Lee during his formative years, at a time when Joann Marshall was on drugs. "She was out in the streets and she asked me to take him," recalls Calloway, "and I took him."

Calloway put Lee in Sunday school and got him involved in a young Christian leadership program. He became a church usher. And many years later, after Marshall had gone astray and began to reconsider his life, those early years seemed to resonate with him. Calloway remembers a visit by Marshall to her front porch in Southeast. He asked her how to open a savings account. He had realized, as she put it, that "fast money" doesn't last long.

"I had to get out there and bump my head," Calloway recalls him telling her. "But now I want to make a change. I've got a daughter and I'm tired of banging my head."

Marshall was looking for a job when he dropped by Shelton's home, but Shelton was sick and asked him to come back. "Most of the time when you tell young people that, you don't see them anymore." But in a day or two, Marshall returned.

Shelton got Brookland Manor's property manager to take on Marshall as a maintenance trainee at $8 an hour. The property paid for his continuing education courses at the community college. He gravitated toward air conditioning, heating and ventilation work, and that is how he became Carl Straughn's protege. He began to see himself making a nice living as an HVAC technician. He talked about buying a car and owning a home.

Even some of Marshall's neighbors began to view him differently. Initially, according to Shelton and others, some residents were wary of allowing the young man inside their apartments. But he did good work, he was always courteous, and soon tenants began requesting that Marshall do their repairs.

"Part of Lee's transition was he had somewhere to go every day," says Shelton. "He had a sense of worth."

Worth can be hard to come by. From behind his desk, Shelton explains. "If you are 19 years old and you have a felony, you spend the next 10 years of your life trying to outlive the felony." Not that he excuses the felon. But it can be so hard to overcome that mistake, that "to motivate that person is a very difficult thing."

Shelton, an elected member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, encounters many young people walking around in a state of depression, though they might not recognize it as such. They can't answer questions about their goals or ambitions, and offer no forecasts about their future. Five years from now? Two years? "They can't think like that," Shelton says.

Lee Marshall was beginning to think like that.

On this morning, Shelton has surrendered his office to some of the young people he employs. They straggle in, authorities on struggle, prison, drugs, single fatherhood and wasted years they're now trying to make up for.

Keith King, 23, does most of the talking. He has taken over Shelton's desk, rocking and spinning in his boss's swivel chair. He once sold drugs, did his time. "All I can say is everybody makes mistakes." Lee Marshall was godfather to one of King's four sons, but King doesn't mince words about Lee. "He slipped up and lost focus," says King. "When you're trying to do right, you can't put that crud in there because it ain't going to mix. When you're drinking Remy you can't go get a bowl of milk."

Translation: Lee Marshall had a career in front of him, was turning things around. Why get into a beef over a jacket that didn't belong to him?

"When you look at the whole situation," adds King, "you can only say, 'You brought it on yourself, Mo.' "

The youngsters call this "fumbling."

Even as Marshall was attempting to transform his life, he continued to be drawn to the nightclub scene, where nothing good seemed to happen. On June 21, 2004, he was accused of firing shots at another man outside the Boom Boom Room in Northeast, according to court records. He was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, but the charge was dismissed. "In these club incidents, you have no idea what the situation was," Shelton says.

Tony Bullock, who served 14 years in prison for narcotics trafficking and is now an outreach worker at Brookland Manor, says Lee Marshall was a good dude, "would give you his last." But his death is a lesson. "We're not going to say he was an innocent bystander," adds Bullock. "We're not going to sugarcoat it. What you reap you sow."

More Gunfire

In the apartment where Joann Marshall has lived nearly a third of her life, the phone still rings for Lee. She answers, "He's not here" because "it's hard to say he's gone." Any piece of mail with his name on it she keeps. She can't reminisce for more than 15 minutes without needing to wipe tears. She points to the kitchen table -- that's where Lee would sit with his library books after he started taking classes at Prince George's Community College.

Three months ago, she had Lee's name tattooed on her left arm. But that wasn't enough. Frustrated with the police department's inability to capture her son's alleged killer, she took to the streets herself. There was Joann Marshall at the neighborhood shopping strip handing out police wanted posters with the alleged murderer's mug on them.

"We just don't understand why we can't find this guy," says Detective William Xanten, who is working the Marshall case.

Joann studies all light-skinned black men of average height with short Afros, wondering if one of them might be Donnell Longus. And in her most desperate move, she went to the neighborhood of Longus's relatives, and handed out her wanted posters there.

As if she didn't have enough worries, on Saturday, July 30, at about 10 p.m., a red sports car cruised past the Marshalls' apartment building on 14th Street. Shots rang out. Her son Delante, who was hanging out front with other kids, was hit twice. His brother Shannon gathered him in his arms, pushed him into a car and sped toward the hospital.

As it turned out, his wounds weren't serious. By the following afternoon, Delante was gingerly sitting up in a bed at Prince George's Hospital Center, surrounded by friends, laughing at jokes, eating fried chicken.

But there was more gunfire in the neighborhood the next night. And the following morning, there was yet more shooting, on the same corner where Lee Marshall was gunned down. This time, Chris Marshall was one of the kids in the line of fire. The shooters grazed two young men, but missed Chris.

"I'd like to move out to Maryland," he says. "I'd like to move far."

This latest spate of violence, neighborhood residents say, is the result of a feud between youngsters from Brookland Manor and those in nearby Langdon Park, triggered by the severe beating of a Langdon Park youth.

It was more than Joann Marshall could absorb. "Where can I hide my sons at?" she asks. "I'm sick of it."

Two weeks ago, she took her family and left Brookland Manor -- at least for the time being. Who knows when she'll return? The elaborate plans she'd been making to celebrate Lee's birthday today, in front of the apartment building, were canceled. "I'm not trying to lose another child."

As for the child she lost -- the child whose aspirations won't be realized and whose mistakes can never be redeemed -- Joann Marshall comforts herself with a simple thought: LeeLee had a paying job and a plan for the future.

"I can say my baby died while he was at work. He changed his life."

Almost.

Staff writer Henri Cauvin contributed to this report.