In U.S., Success Eluded Victim

Pr. George's Teens Charged in Death Of Immigrant Man

Aboubacar Camara came to the United States more than a decade ago, hoping for opportunities he was unlikely to find in his small West African country.

But life in this country proved difficult, according to friends here and his sister in Guinea. Trained in banking and finance, he found himself sweeping floors and doing other odd jobs at a moving company in Prince George's County. Even so, for years he sent money home.

"He was always saying that his life wasn't easy," his oldest sister, Mabinti Camara, said through an interpreter, reached by phone in the town of Kindia, where Camara was born. "His life was hard."

Last month, Aboubacar Camara, 56, was fatally beaten near an elementary school in Bladensburg. Authorities have charged four youths, ages 14 and 15, in the slaying. Police have said the youths took his shoes and a pack of Marlboros.

It was a painfully public ending to a life spent toiling mostly in the shadows, far from the family he left behind years ago.

Camara had two brothers and five sisters, Mabinti Camara said, speaking in Susu. His brothers had died but his sisters are alive, as are Camara's children, all of them adults, she said.

After he left Guinea about 20 years ago, Aboubacar Camara moved first to Europe, where he worked as an aide in some of his country's embassies, according to Saliou Diallo, president of the Guinea Community of Greater Washington. In 1994, Camara moved to the United States, and he became a familiar face at weddings, funerals and other gatherings of Guineans in the area, Diallo said.

For a time, Camara worked at a carwash in Kenilworth. About two years ago, he started doing odd jobs at Moving Masters in Hyattsville.

"He called everybody my brother, my friend," said Lori Rom, an administrative assistant at Moving Masters. "He wasn't an official employee of the company, but he would come around a lot, so we would give him a few dollars to clean up the lot. He was a nice guy."

Carolyn Steele, sales coordinator for the company, said: "He was a very giving person. He did whatever we asked him to do."

But pleasant as he was, Camara was troubled, some acquaintances said. Increasingly, Camara appeared to have a problem with alcohol, several people said.

Lary Mitchell, Camara's former landlord at a boarding house in Cheverly, said that Camara paid his monthly $150 rent on time but that his drinking was dragging him down and ended up costing him his room about a year ago, after the police brought him home drunk one too many times.