05/02/04
Lila J. Mills
Plain Dealer Reporter
They were a band of brothers on the football field, but that night for some fathomless reason they played a different game on the streets.
About 2 a.m. on April 16, the trio of Benedictine High School athletes drove to brick-paved Craven Avenue at East 124th Street, about two miles from school and a block from the home of one of the teens.
They targeted two men who had just pulled to the curb in an older-model Cutlass Oldsmobile. They thought the driver, 20-year-old Rodney Roberts, might have money and drugs. They also thought Roberts, who had a reputation in the neighborhood as laid-back and quiet, would be an easy target.
"They were cocky," one law enforcement source said. "They were on a rush. You can bet they didn't think it would turn into a shooting."
What happened next, according to law-enforcement sources, happened fast:
Roberts had just returned from his girlfriend's house and was parking his car outside his home. Within seconds, sophomore Lorenzo Hunter was at Roberts' side while 18-year-old Raymond Williams went around to the passenger side.
Both aimed phony guns, believed to be replicas of 9mm weapons. Jon Huddleston was nearby. One of them demanded cash.
The passenger reached into his pocket and threw loose cash out the window.
At that moment, the teen football standouts might have walked away untouched, with untarnished reputations and unlimited potential.
But Lorenzo went a step further.
He ordered Roberts out of the car, authorities said. He may have intended to pat down Roberts and search the car for cash, but that never happened. As Roberts got out, he pulled a handgun and fired.
Williams and Huddleston took off running, Roberts and his friend left, and Lorenzo lay in the street bleeding, soon to be dead from three gunshot wounds.
Police said the trio did not drink or take drugs that night but were just hanging out during their spring break from school.
Some suspect the older teens came up with the plan on a whim and Lorenzo got involved because he idolized them.
"It's ironic," Burke said. "His love for football and his friends might have caused him to make a decision like that."
Within four days, Roberts turned himself in to homicide detectives Denise Kovach and James Gajowski and is in jail on an aggravated-murder charge, claiming self-defense.
Williams and Huddleston were arrested last Monday while in classes at Benedictine. The two now are out on bond facing murder and aggravated robbery charges that could bring life sentences. The school has suspended both indefinitely.
Since the robbery ended in the shooting death, the two students face more serious charges, prosecutors say.
Last week, Huddleston and Williams gave statements admitting culpability. Pat D'Angelo, Huddleston's lawyer, said he hopes for a fair resolution.
Williams' lawyer, William Dawson, said they had no intention to rob anyone. It was just a joke that had snowballed. "A lot of work has to be done before anyone throws themselves on the mercy of the court," he said.
In the aftermath, mentors and friends of the Benedictine teens are shaken and grief-stricken: How could the three, who had so much going for them, end up taken down by the streets they'd been counseled to avoid?
Glenville football and track coach Ted Ginn Sr., who met Williams through his son, mourned. "What we try to do with the children is keep them away from these kinds of situations," he said. "This is a sad day for me."
All of the teens had seemed headed in the right direction. Williams, Ohio's Mr. Football, and Huddleston were to graduate May 24. And Lorenzo, 16, was a rising star on the school's championship football team and a solid student.
They had been tight since Lorenzo entered the small school on a 20-acre wooded campus in 2002. One classmate said they were like brothers.
None had a juvenile record or disciplinary problems, although Williams had academic trouble and had received tutoring.
Still, Williams was to attend West Virginia University in Morgantown, where his grandfather was raised. One source said Williams had been looking for landscaping jobs, but had no luck because of the weather.
Williams' old friend, Donte Whitner, who plays football at Ohio State, was stunned to hear of the arrest. The two had played on the same municipal youth league team for three years.
"I'd give him the ball [back then] and with somebody in his face, Ray would cut right, cut left, then cut it back right and he was gone 80 yards for a touchdown," Whitner remembered.
Whitner said Williams, who then attended Kirk Middle School in East Cleveland, was a leader, generous and serious about football. He was known to develop his own conditioning regimen: instead of using high-tech machinery, he'd go to the beach to run on sand.
"He was just a kid trying to make it," Ginn said. "The sky was the limit for Ray."
Others said the same of Huddleston. The quietest of three brothers, Huddleston attended elementary school at St. Wenceslas in Maple Heights and played CYO football back then.
St. Wenceslas Principal Sharon Vejdovec said the Huddleston brothers are "soft-spoken, polite and respectful," raised properly by their parents.
"I saw Jon a few weeks ago," she said, "and it was still Yes ma'am, yes sir.' "
One neighbor, who refused to give his name, said the brothers sometimes kept company with loud and rowdy kids, but seemed like typical teens. Coaches marveled at his comeback after an injury sidelined him during his junior year. He stuck to a tough rehabilitation program and was back on the field last fall.
"It was like he never lost a step," one source said.
Lorenzo also was dedicated. He dreamed of going to college, winning the Heisman Trophy and playing in the NFL.
Melvin Burke, director of the Lonnie Burten Recreation Center on East 46th Street near Quincy Avenue, saw Lorenzo compete on the center's team in elementary school. Back then Lorenzo lived in public housing off East 55th Street near Quincy Avenue with his mom and siblings and attended St. Adalbert Elementary School on East 83rd Street. His mom was a strong role model, Burke said, and always volunteered at the center.
"Lorenzo had it all going," he said. "He was so focused for his age. When we get a guy like that at Lonnie Burten, we get overly protective."
Mike Powers, who works in the Youth Services Department at the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, said he put Lorenzo on a weight-training program before his freshman year in hopes the boy wouldn't be behind some of the other kids, who were better off financially and able to hire weight trainers.
Lorenzo never missed a day of training that summer.
That fall, "he ended up being ahead of some of the other freshman football players," Powers said proudly. "His dream became my dream for him."
Now that dream is over. Powers and Burke were pallbearers at Lorenzo's funeral, and the question lingers: How did the lives of these focused teens take such a senseless turn?
Bob Fortuna contributed to this story.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
ljmills@plaind.com, 216-999-4141