By Colbert I. King
Saturday, December 24, 2005
On the twelfth day before Christmas, two teacher's aides were walking through the playground at J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Southeast Washington around 7 a.m. when they saw what they thought was a pile of old clothes on the ground. As they got closer, the pile took shape: It was the body of a black woman, frozen, with her brains scattered across the playground, lying in a pool of blood between the hopscotch squares and the monkey bars. They screamed and ran to tell the principal. Police swarmed the area.
On the eleventh day before Christmas , children were not allowed to go outside and play. Crisis counselors sent to the school from the National Center for Children and Families remained for a second day at the school helping grieving and anxious children.
On the tenth day before Christ mas, the J.C. Nalle playground was still without lights and locks for the gates, although the school had requested both for the past three years. The lights might have illuminated the shooting suspect's face because a surveillance camera mounted on the school is focused on where the crime took place. The camera, however, was ineffective because only a few dim streetlights lined the block: Abandoned buildings are on one side of the street, the playground on the other. As a result, the camera captured only flickers of light from the gunshots and, of course, when the sun rose, the body.
That same day, The Post identified the shooting victim as Lakesha Parker, 33, of the 4600 block of East Capitol Street SE.
The news item warranted all of two sentences. So many murders, so little space, so little
interest.
On the ninth day before Christmas , Jamila Larson, a social worker assigned to J.C. Nalle Elementary by the National Center for Children and Families, wrote that "janitors and inevitably the children find used condoms, needles and broken bottles on the playground."
Larson, source of the twelfth day's account, also shared what happened when teachers arrived at school the day Parker's body was found. The authorities had not yet covered her, Larson wrote, so some teachers saw the body from their classroom windows.
"They covered their classroom windows with butcher paper as quickly as possible and ushered their children in as they filed into the classrooms at 8:30 a.m. I arrived at school at 10:00 and the body was covered but still out on the playground. The body was removed at about 10:30 a.m. and the pool of blood remained until 11:00 a.m."
On the eighth day before Christmas, Mayor Tony Williams continued to feverishly promote the baseball stadium agreement now forecast to cost the city $667 million -- well above the approved budget of $589 million.
On the seventh day before Christmas, J.C. Nalle Elementary School was still without locks for its fences and lights for the playground.
On the sixth day before Christmas, the D.C. police said that no arrests had been made in the shooting death of Parker and that her case was still open.
Tracy Wright, principal of J.C. Nalle, told me by phone that she would like to discuss conditions at the school but that a student emergency had intervened. She promised to call me back if the school system allowed her to talk.
On the fifth day before Christmas, the mayor remained consumed with rescuing his hugely expensive stadium agreement from certain defeat in the D.C. Council.
The same day, I visited J.C. Nalle Elementary. It was a return trip. (See July 28, 2001, column "A Tour the Mayor Should Take.")
The school's appalling and dehumanizing surroundings hadn't changed. On the south side of C Street SE, hulking and ghastly abandoned shells of multistory public housing still stared at J.C. Nalle and the playground. To ask children to learn and play in the midst of such ugliness and despair borders on child abuse. (See for yourself -- Nalle is at 50th and C streets SE.)
The surveillance camera attached to the school building pointed at the spot where Parker was discovered. Scattered dirt covered the ground where she had lain bleeding. The gate leading to the playground was open, the lock still broken, eight days after her body had been removed.
A metal school door leading to another part of the playground was pocked by 13 bullets. Four protrusions were on the door's interior (they looked like metal nipples), bulges where the bullets almost made it into the school. The door has been in that condition for at least three years, Larson said. Little kids see it every day.
On the fourth day before Christmas, the extra police presence at the school had
disappeared.
An e-mail arrived from Alexis Moore, chief communications officer for the D.C. Public Schools, advising me that while officials at school system headquarters "appreciate your concern for this school family," the adults and students need time to "process, or even completely mourn, the event." Moore asked that I not write "about this tragedy until at least after Jan. 2, so that some time can pass."
I declined, citing the continuing nature of J.C. Nalle's appalling environment for learning. I threw in a few questions of my own, such as whether the superintendent had visited the school since the body was found on the playground.
On the third day before Christmas, Moore called to say an associate superintendent visited the school on the day the body was found.
Meanwhile, at noontime, the mayor made a last-minute shopping excursion, and his public relations folks issued a news release quoting him as declaring, "There's great shopping downtown." He also touted the baseball stadium deal.
On the second day before Christmas, I asked the school system, through Moore, to explain why locks on the playground's gates had not been repaired and why the bullet-pocked exterior door had not been replaced.
At 1:08 p.m., Moore replied via e-mail: "Our facilities people delivered a chain and padlock for the fence and began repairing the lights at Nalle today. While I cannot explain why the door has yet to be replaced, the engineers plan to complete a short-term repair involving sheet metal next week."
On the last day before Christmas, D.C. clergy are busy preparing Christmas Day sermons to proclaim the birth of light and the death of darkness . . . except, maybe, around J.C. Nalle Elementary School when the sun goes down.
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