Jesswill, life in 19 paragraphs
1. He killed someone. With a gun. He didn’t use his hands, of course.
2. Gowan was right. The single paragraph in the NY post Police blotter reads,
NY Post
The Bronx
Police have arrested a young man who gunned down another teen in Tremont, authorities said.
Jesswill Perez, 18, was arrested Saturday for shooting Edward Molina, 18, after the two argued on East Tremont Avenue at around 7:30 p.m. Dec. 20, cops said.
Molina was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital after being struck once in the torso, and was later pronounced dead.
Perez has been charged with murder, manslaughter, and possession of a loaded firearm, cops said.
It is enough. A paragraph tells the whole story.
3. It was a hot 2nd floor 9th grade English classroom. I was called there because Jesswill would not listen; not sit; not work for the teacher. And he was up and yelling; refusing to leave the room. He knew me as the Principal, the head of school. But, though we had a slight relationship, it was limited. He talked I listened (and then I talked) he wouldn’t move. I always counted on, believed in, the power of relationships. Now it wasn’t enough, relationships. What to do?
4. Maybe two paragraphs tell the story. Jesswill’s mug shot docket from February 2014 lists his date of birth as a year. (See attached appendix 1) Not a date; a year. No pictures from this facility. Just a year of birth.
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Arrest Date: |
2014-02-08 0:00 am |
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Booking Facility: |
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Height: |
5 ft 8 inches |
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Weight: |
125 lbs |
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Gender: |
Male |
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Date of Birth: |
1995 |
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Age at Booking: |
18 |
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Age now: |
19 |
5. So I had to do something: it was now about power. I could have a security officer pull him out; but there would have been a fight; handcuffs; the works. And I would be handling over power, authority. As principal in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx I couldn’t lose.
6. Why just a birth year in the docket? Probably because Jesswill was too stubborn to give the date; I could see them barely could get his name out of him at booking. Stubborn. Holding on to the space he had. He couldn’t let go. There is also probably why he was carrying when they arrested him.
7. ‘Alright. Ms. Seoane; Mr. Ramirez. – Room 203 is free. Bring the class there. Now please.’
I stood in the doorway as the kids moved; Jesswill got up around the last to go.
‘Where are you going?’
To class
‘No no. You wanted to stay here; you refused to leave; you’re staying here with me. I am granting your request. You can stay; have what you want.’ He went crazy.
8. You see, I had become Jesswill; Anthony Claybourne; Spencer Bridges; Latasha Frett; Sarah Cunningham; I had become them all. Angry; stubborn; overheated in a flash, like The Flash. I had no margins in my life. All in; all the time. Flash. And I couldn’t lose. Never. To leave that room Jesswill would have to kill me.
9. He tired. But look at the docket. 125 pounds. I was 300 then. He bounced off me. The officers left. They knew to go from how I handled incidents in the past. Hell, they didn’t want to be there anyway, with a crazy student and a crazy principal? And they were sacred of me when I was like this. They had seen.
10. After a while, I got him to talk. About a father in jail; how he had to take care of his brothers; sisters; mother. He felt he was the oldest.
He couldn’t fail. He wasn’t concerned about school. He meant life. Concerned about others’ lives. He looked in my eyes. He told me that he thought I cared for him. He would try to be, do, better. I think he meant it. Still do. We were on in a moment. A flash. We came up with a plan. It lasted two days.
11. He is charged with killing an 18 year old on 20 December. Christmas. A family spent their Christmas in a funeral parlour. The cops caught Jesswill in February 2014. How? Look at the docket. He was selling marijuana while still holding the gun. The gun tied him to the crime. He couldn’t let it go.
12. Jesswill is the type of kid, 125 in weight, slight build, mouthy, who won’t last in prison. He will be tracked and cut; hunted and punked. Deader than the kid he killed.
13. I lost myself in that place: that abyss of rejection, death and despair. My last three years there I saw three students murdered on the street: Tonya; Jared; Elisabeth. I was immersed in sorrow.
14. Want the details? Most people do. Don’t worry. I can’t forget them.
Jared was shot outside a house party two plus years past graduation. He was a great great dancer.
15. Lisbeth was bi. She was sleeping with her 20 plus year old lover when her lover’s husband came home, unexpectedly released from lock up. He killed Lisbeth. But not his wife, not mother of his two children. He cut Lisbeth up; put her in a plastic bag in a closet. The neighbours complained about the smell after a few days.
16. Tonya beat up a neighbourhood girl. Now, she could have killed with her hands. It must have been a bad beating. On the side steps of the school one night, she was sitting with her man. A guy came up to her and knifed her in the neck. He stabbed her man to, but he lived. She bled out crawling back home, a block away at the Trinity Housing projects.
The next day I visited the family. I should have been killed when I went to enter Tonya’s building. People in the community were angry. Timothy Robinson, a former student saved me. He came by on a banana bike jumped off and hugged me right before I was to go. Got everyone to back off. Why? He loved me for loving him. He had dropped out of school to do business; make money. He had to take care of family.
17. I wouldn’t leave Tonya; Jared; Lisbeth, any of them, that night. I couldn’t. Loving them was my power; my soul; my identity; me. I couldn’t back up.
18. That’s how they died. I don’t know all about how they lived. Some one loved them. Someone. I know that.
19. Jesswill, lives. On some unknown day he will be 19. There should always be a 19. At least that.
Appendix 1
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Status: remanded State: NY |
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