After a Violent Childhood, How Did Will Make It?

On 'Oprah,' UDC Student Describes Seeing Mother and Brother Slain

Every life has its turning points. William Kellibrew's first came when he was 10 years old, watching the man who had just shot his mother and brother walk toward him with a gun.

Yesterday, a crowd of his friends and professors at the University of the District of Columbia watched him tell his story on the "Oprah Winfrey Show." Many, as they wiped their tears away, had the same question: How did Will survive?

In a world in which violence often cycles into more violence and troubled childhoods can become troubled adulthoods, William C. Kellibrew IV made it. Not only made it: At 33, he's the UDC senior class president, he's studying business in the United Kingdom on a scholarship this semester. He's on the tennis team, an accomplished singer, a volunteer, a natural leader -- the kind of person who does well at almost everything he puts his mind to and laughs it off.

Why did he survive? his grandmother, Delores Short, asked. "I often wonder about that. You know? You just wonder. He led a suicidal life."

An Early Turning Point

Will Kellibrew woke up that morning, July 2, 1984, because he heard shouting outside.

No one else was home.

He was an outgoing kid and a mama's boy, the one of the five children who always wanted to go with his mother wherever she went. He remembers pushing the cart while she shopped for groceries, going ice-skating, watching her dance the Hustle in their living room before going out at night.

Will Kellibrew was the one the other children in the neighborhood looked up to, the one with lots of plans: Play in the abandoned car near their rental home in Capitol Heights, build roads by the creek and play follow-the-leader.

He looked out the window that morning and saw his mother yelling for help. Her boyfriend, who had recently moved out, was pulling her down the street toward the home. His 13-year-old brother, Anthony Cephas, held her around the waist, trying to pull her the other way.

Will didn't like the boyfriend, Marshall Williams. One night, he woke up because Williams was beating him with a rubber hose from the washing machine. He had seen his mother show relatives the bruises Williams had caused.

He didn't know, then, that his mom had been hiding from Williams, only that she hadn't been around and that the kids, from 6 to 15 years old, had mostly been taking care of themselves.

He didn't know that Williams had served time in jail for murder.