Posted on 04/02/2009 8:21:16 AM PDT by DCBryan1
2 brothers fatally shot 15 years, 2 blocks apart
As he lay dying in ’94, 1st bade 2nd goodbye
BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
As Toboris Molden lay dying from a gunshot wound on a February night 15 years ago, he took care to say goodbye to his grandmother, his mother and his two younger brothers.
The youngest brother was Anthony Jackson, named for his father and just a year old at the time. On Wednesday, their mother again grieved the loss of a son. This time it was Jackson, who was 16. Little Rock police found him and a family friend each shot in the head inside a red 1999 Pontiac Sunfire at 2:30 a.m. stopped in the intersection of West 22nd and South Valentine streets.
That is two blocks from where Molden was shot. “My son got shot on [West] Martin [Street], and now this one got shot on Valentine,” their mother, Debra Smith, said as she stroked her forehead with her long green fingernails. “Fifteen years apart. I can’t question God, but I want to know why.”
Jackson was her fourth son, older only than Smith’s 11-yearold daughter. She described him, as mothers tend to do, as respectful and a “good boy.”
She said she knew he wasn’t perfect. He ran away a couple of years ago after a stint in a juvenile hall to avoid a sentence of boot camp.
“He said he’d rather live on the streets than go to boot camp,” Smith, 48, said.
He met people on the streets, people his mother called “not the right kind of people.” Jackson started selling drugs to make money and survive, she said. He had not been to school in at least a year.
“Everybody knew Anthony was selling drugs,” Smith said. “It wasn’t no big secret. But when I just saw him on Sunday, he come by my house and he told me he was thinking of turning himself in. He wanted to start a new life. I don’t know if he knew how to do that yet.”
Little Rock police found Jackson dead in the Pontiac shot in the back of the head, sitting alongside the body of Kenneth Marion, 57, a neighborhood handyman with a long record of drug abuse and prison stints.
“I have been getting phone calls all day with people trying to tell me something they think about what happened,” Smith said. “I just don’t know what the truth is yet.”
Investigators had made little progress in the case Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s still early,” Little Rock police spokesman Michelle Hill said. “We’re confident we’ll keep progressing in the case and get to a positive outcome. Somebody called in hearing the shots, so we know there are witnesses out there.”
One of Jackson’s uncles is Leifel Jackson, a former drug dealer who claims the title of co-founder of the Original Gangster Crips gang in Little Rock. His life is sufficiently different today that Gov. Mike Beebe considered granting him a pardon in January.
“We were close,” Leifel Jackson said of his nephew. “He loved his Uncle Leifel.”
Uncle and nephew talked regularly, sometimes about life on the streets.
“I was talking to him a few months ago, or maybe a year ago, and he told me how proud he was of me for turning my life around,” Leifel Jackson said. “He said it let him know that no matter how deep he was in his own mess that there was always a chance that he could turn his life around.”
Just as each child is different, Smith said, her reaction to Jackson’s death is far different from how she felt when she lost Molden.
Molden was known as a good child, always home by 9 p.m. He avoided the gang life that consumed many of his peers growing up around West 22nd and South Valmar streets in the years before his death.
He was 15 when he was hit twice in a drive-by shooting at 22nd and Martin. At least one bullet entered his body from the back as he tried to hop a fence. The angle of his jump put the bullet on a path to his heart, his mother said.
He ran a block and banged on his mother’s backdoor until she opened it.
“He told me he was shot,” Smith said. “But I couldn’t find any blood. He didn’t look like he’d been shot. You couldn’t see anything on him.”
Molden’s mother and grandmother helped him lie down. More relatives gathered around, including 1-year-old Anthony Jackson.
“We were telling him to hang on, that he was going to make it,” Smith said. “But I guess he just knew. He told us to be quiet, said he had to say goodbye to everybody. He said goodbye to me, to his grandmother. He said goodbye to his brothers.”
Taken to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, Molden died in surgery just before midnight.
A decade and a half later, Smith sat on her overstuffed couch wearing a white Barack Obama T-shirt and fighting her memories and her emotions.
She no longer lives in the neighborhood where she grew up, the one that claimed her two sons, having moved two years ago to a house just west of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It was from there that she went at 3 a.m. to try to get close to Anthony Jackson after police told her he was dead.
“It wasn’t like with Toboris,” Smith said. “I didn’t get to see Anthony. I didn’t get to say to him that I loved him. I didn’t get to touch him. I still haven’t seen Anthony’s body.”
There is one way in which Smith said she hopes Molden’s death will be different from Jackson’s. Though Little Rock police arrested two people in Molden’s killing, one was acquitted, and charges were eventually dropped against the other.
“He never got justice,” Smith said. “It wasn’t like people didn’t know who did it, but nobody wanted to be a witness.”
For that to happen in her younger son’s case is unacceptable, she said.
“Not this time,” she said. “Somebody saw something. Somebody knows something. This will not happen again.”
How many people did Mom snitch on? Her son would be alive had she taken control, but she waited until it was too late. How many people will she snitch on now? None? People like her enable the drug users and killers. I feel sorry for her, but she has some guilt in this, too.
The first one shot wasn’t in a gang and was home by 9 pm. That was an accident.
“It is not my fault, society’s fault, the police deptartments’ fault, or the fault of anything or anyone else you will try to blame it on.”
######
Exactly right. Just like the “victims” of Katrina.
My only question...What was that Amish boy doing in the Pontiac to start with?
Great description! The sad thing is this is Bambi's vision for the entire country (except that some of us might not even get the food).
This info came from the same woman that described Anthony "as respectful and a 'good boy.'" Sorry, but I have to call BS.
A major Little Rock politician had their daughter murdered and thrown out on a bridge and nobody knows a thing about that either.
FWIW, I lived in LR (West Little Rock on Chenal Pkway) for several ( 8 )months about 10 yrs. ago, and I have been through there many times. Just telling you my opinion.West LR was very nice-and there were some other nice areas. However......much of it-including parts that looked as if they were fairly recently quite nice, weren’t-to say the least.
It’s in all cities. The bigger the city, the more it’s present. Now if you want a city that is 80%, try New Orleans.
True that, with any community. A hand out isn't a hand up.
““Fifteen years apart. I can’t question God, but I want to know why.”
My dear lady, where was the young man’s father?
Boys with fathers in the home get murdered, too. But the odds are heavily stacked against it.
Fathers, stay with the family and raise your kids.
That case was solved! He was former mayor of Little Rock, living in Maumelle. Daughter's car broke down and a "newbie" rapists, on his first try, panicked as she fought to get away and ran over her, killing her.
LOTS of heat on that one since it happened in BROAD DAYLIGHT on the I-430 bridge over the Arkansas River.
Criminal confessed to a priest, and they both went to the police station a couple of years later and confessed. He pled guilty (no trial) and was sentenced to life in prison. White victim, white criminal.
My father drove in and out of Little Rock for Trailways Bus, back in the 40’s and 50’ and Little Rock was nothing like it is today. (Neither was any of our other U.S. cities).
One of our greatest assets have long been lost. We have failed to teach our younger generations: “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6)”He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness and honour.” (Proverbs 21:21).
“Wherewithal(how) shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought Thee; O let me not wonder from Thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” (Psalm 119:9-11).
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD;....” (Ps.33:6)
correct me if i am wrong, but God does not control the actions of men. especially men with no faith. so please, mom, don’t look look to Him for answers. look in the mirror.
I just didn’t want anyone from Ark. to think I was trashing their state or any LR residents to think I was trashing their city without ever living there. I didn’t mean to trash it, period. I met lots of nice folks there. But facts are facts-lots of areas of LR are in a bad way. And it’s one city of many. A damn shame.
Amen....Damn shame....lots of cities like ours.....and liberalism is to blame!
Agreed.
“…the consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.” Jeff Cooper
AMEN!
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