Boy's Paralysis From Shooting Pains Grandpa
By DAVID
[email protected] 215-854-2643
BENJAMIN WRIGHT'S heart breaks a bit more each day when he visits his grandson at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
He locks eyes with 6-year-old Jabar Wright and watches as the youngster slowly comes to the realization that he can't move. Wright doesn't know if Jabar remembers the screams that filled Wright's car in Strawberry Mansion Saturday night, when four men jumped out of the shadows and started firing at the car. He doesn't think Jabar understands that one of the bullets that struck him in the neck left him paralyzed from the neck down.
"He just cries," Wright said softly yesterday. "He just cries and cries."
Wright struggles to maintain his composure when he thinks of doctors and nurses shuttling Jabar from intensive care to operating rooms and back. He is tormented on several levels. A proud grandfather extremely attached to his "little Bar-Bar," Wright is devastated by the motionless future that his grandson is facing. And he is also tortured by the knowledge that the suspects were also troubled neighborhood youths whom Wright tried to look out for.
One of them, Raheem Collins, even lived for a time with Wright and his family. It is of little comfort to Wright that as of last night, all four were in custody.
And then there is the spectre of his past - jail time served for a murder 20 years ago - that is hanging over him, filling his life with suspicion when he says there should be sympathy."
I've been living right. I corrected my life and built a beautiful family," Wright, 40, said in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. "No one has stopped to consider what we're going through as a family," he said. "My grandson's been hurt, and they're depicting me like I'm involved in criminal activity."
Wright referred to police and media reports that identified him as the shooters' intended target because of a previous incident. He said the intimation is that "I'm some kind of drug dealer or big boss, but I don't live like that. I don't agree with that lifestyle."
For the past 10 years, Wright said he's devoted himself to helping people in his Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. He and his wife supervise a city homeless shelter. During the summer, Wright runs a basketball league near 33rd and Diamond streets, offering neighborhood kids a chance to focus on something positive.
By acting as a referee during basketball games, though, Wright believes he inadvertently became a target in a neighborhood war that started with a shooting in a local bar on New Year's Day two years ago. Wright said the four suspects - Collins, Donte Rollins, Kevin Norris and an unidentified 17-year-old - lost friends and loved ones in the unofficial war, which involves two groups of young men who live near Wright's home on Natrona Street near Susquehanna Avenue. Young men from both sides of the war participated in the summer basketball league, he said. By acknowledging the four shooters' enemies, Wright said he unknowingly had become a target.
Johnson noted that he and his wife recently planned to move to Southwest Philadelphia to get away from the violent cycle that has engulfed their neighborhood.
"It's misplaced aggression," he sighed. "They adopt the rappers' attitude. If they think you cross the line - whatever the line is - they'll kill you. They'll blow your brains out."
As he steered his Pontiac Bonneville down Westmont Street near 29th shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday, Wright had no idea that he was about to drie into an ambush.
"It was a good day. It was a day of laughter," he said. "We had six kids in the car, coming from the movies. That was the frame of mind we were in." Wright had just dropped off two grandkids on Westmont and was ready to turn onto 29th when the shooting started. Wright and his wife were in the front seats. In the back seat were Wright's young daughter, Jabar and two other grandchildren.
"My wife and daughter started screaming for their life. I was driving frantically down the street, trying to get away from the bullets," Wright said.
He said his 10-year-old daughter had to stifle screams and perform CPR on Jabar.Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson visited Jabar on Sunday.
"I went up to the seventh floor and saw him," Johnson said, shaking his head. "It's very, very sad."
Johnson said he was particularly pleased that the suspects were no longer on the street. Rollins was arrested on Saturday, and the three other suspects turned themselves in to police. Collins and the 17-year-old surrendered to anti-crime activist Anthony Murphy, head of the city's Town Watch Integrated Services, on Tuesday. Norris turned himself in at Central Detectives last night. Murphy said the suspects' relatives had contacted Town Watch because they wanted to avoid further bloodshed.
"It demonstrated what communities can do when working together to address violence in their neighborhood," he said. "I consider it a victory for the city of Philadelphia.
"Wright said his mind was fixed firmly on how the justice system will treat the suspects."We need mandatory laws," he said, "that if you hurt a child, you don't see the streets ever again."
