Jamel Whitley was driving home from the barber when bullets suddenly ricocheted through his car.Whitley was hit in the knee, hip, back and head. His passenger, Adrien Brady, was struck in the leg. Panicking, Whitley jerked his car away from their assailant, who had pulled alongside on Martin Luther King Drive near Interstate 10. In his haste, he slammed into a guardrail, killing Brady. The gunman escaped. Despite the chaos, Whitley had recognized him from a shared stint in prison. What Whitley, a 29-year-old documented gangster, didn’t yet know was that the man was a rival who for years had harbored a personal grudge against Whitley’s family. The shooting was a bitter lesson for Whitley, who after his 2007 release from prison vowed to make amends. It grimly foreshadowed a predicament soon to be faced by his close childhood friend, Tyrone Darden. Their story illustrates the challenges faced by many kids in low-income, high-crime areas. Both have struggled to escape the pitfalls of this East x Side neighborhood nestled around I-10, ingrained for decades with drugs, gangs and poverty. Whitley and Darden met as shy, skinny boys who excelled on the basketball court at the East Side Boys and Girls Club. Both were from single-parent homes with East Side roots. While Darden’s family tried to shield him from gang violence, Whitley’s family was entrenched in it. His relatives are founding members of the East Terrace Gangsters, a street gang affiliated with the Crips that grew out of an East Side housing project.
In the ensuing years, they went down opposite paths. They reconnected after Darden, 29, returned to his old neighborhood with a master’s degree in special education and a desire to help troubled kids. Like Whitley, his good intentions would soon be dashed. For many in this depressed area, Darden embodied the one who got away.
Lean and confident, with a sharp wit, he was one of few Gates Elementary School classmates to graduate from college. His triumphs in track and football landed him a full scholarship to Texas State University. Though he could do virtually anything, Darden returned home in 2003 as an elementary school teacher and coach.
“I had to give back what was given to me,” he said. Some of his college friends and relatives thought it was a mistake, warning that he would be dragged down by the problems back home. “We told him plenty of times that his idea of wanting to leave the East Side, go get a master’s and then come back to the East Side was stupid,” said his friend Brushaud Callis, a middle school classmate. Darden was “at the top of the mountain, compared to where he came from. But it’s a lot easier for someone falling off the mountain to pull you down than for you to pull them up.” Back home, Darden hooked up with cousins and old friends, many who had been to prison and back.
“I’d been hanging out with these people my whole life,” he said. Some consistently begged for money; others turned a six-week-stay at his house into six months. Still more put him into dicey situations with the law. In one case, Darden was charged for the marijuana his cousin — without his knowledge, he said — hid in his car. The case was later expunged. Darden also began drinking more at dubious nightclubs. “I wanted to have some fun,” he said. “I’ve been staying home all these years.”
In October 2006, Darden left Walzem Lounge, a now-defunct East Side bar known for its strong drinks, and was at the access road of Loop 410 and Perrin Central when he didn’t stop at a stop sign, a report said. Darden failed a breath test and was charged with DWI. His supervisors told him his job wouldn’t be jeopardized if he completed his probation. After serving eight years in prison for aggravated robbery, Whitley was paroled in early 2007 and vowed to stay out of trouble. He was hired as a forklift driver at a warehouse that contracts with H-E-B, talked about building on college credits he’d acquired in prison and played basketball with his son. He said prison had softened him, “taught me about responsibilities.” “Being away from his culture, I think the humane side of (him) came out,” said Darden, who lived with Whitley that summer and spent hours watching movies with his friend, who was confined at home by an electronic monitor. That fall — after four years of trying — Darden landed a coaching spot at Sam Houston High School, alongside his old football coach, Russell Tatum. “He was so excited,” said Darden’s mother, Joyce. “He was like, ‘This is the school I went to, this is the one I want to go back to.’.”
Tatum called Darden a “stellar kid” who joked about taking over his mentor’s job.
But Darden clashed with the principal, who he said accused him of being too close to his students, not enough of an authority figure. Darden argued that relating to his students — many whose families he knew — made him a better teacher. In his free time, Darden hung out on a crime-riddled vacant lot at Ferris and Bellinger, a spot next to Whitley’s family home known for East Terrace Gangsters selling crack. Despite its reputation, Darden insists it also functions as a neighborhood square, where residents catch up, socialize and drink a tallboy or two. Tatum recalled a conversation with Darden about “the ills in coming back.” He warned, “It’s very difficult to be a teacher and coach until 7:30 p.m., then be somebody else when you leave.” What had been minor tiffs with Darden’s principal escalated into an investigation when, near the end of the 2008 spring semester, a fight erupted on a day they were understaffed. Darden, who was roaming the halls, was blamed for poor supervision and placed on administrative leave. Eventually, he was cleared and the district renewed his teaching contract for the 2008-09 school year. Yet the experience had soured him, and he applied for other jobs. Darden accepted a teaching spot in Gatesville, west of Waco, which gave him a pay raise and put him on the head-coaching track. “Everyone had always been saying, ‘Tyrone, you need to get away from the East Side,’” he said. He liked his colleagues and the coach who recruited him. After years of teaching a range of subjects, he finally had the chance to specialize in one, choosing math. The district even sent him to a weekend seminar in Dallas — “It was crunk, it was like, ‘Yeah, I’m finally teaching something.’.” But he missed home. He had never been more than an hour’s drive away. “There wasn’t nothing wrong with Gatesville, really, but I’ve been in this neighborhood my whole life,” he said.
In late August, Darden headed to San Antonio for the weekend to watch his son Tyrell’s football game. After three hours on the road, an officer pulled him over and accused him of driving drunk. Darden, who didn’t take a breath test, denies it. The Comal County district attorney’s office and the New Braunfels Police Department refused to release details of Darden’s arrest report, citing the investigation.
Sitting in his jail cell later, Darden felt the weight of the universe crushing him.
“I felt like I had let everyone down and I didn’t want to be here no more,” he said.
Struggling to pay legal fees for his first DWI, he said that juggling that with his $1,600 monthly child support payment was tough. His relationship with Tyrell’s mother, Gracie, remains strained. As soon as he was released, he drove to his grandfather’s whitewashed house east of I-10, where he’d spent much of his childhood. He got drunk on a six-pack of malt liquor and slit his wrists, leaving scars that still snake halfway around his arm. After nine months at the warehouse, Whitley said, the contractor told him it was no longer employing felons.
He was hired to work as a safety manager for Faulkner8USA’s Grand Hyatt project, but when delays plagued that development, he lost his job and went to Sterling Foods, which paid him $8.50 an hour. With his son to help support and bills to pay, it was hard sometimes not to peer enviously at the hustle on the block, where he knew he could make $4,000 a week selling crack, as he had in the past. In July 2007, Whitley was at an East Side house in the 300 block of Ferris with three of his cousins and two friends, all documented ETG members with long rap sheets. The Police Department’s Tactical Response Unit officers, acting on a tip that ETGs were using the house as a crack house, obtained a search warrant and raided the house, arresting the six for having drugs. According to a report, police found about 35 grams, or a little more than an ounce, of cocaine and 40 grams of marijuana in separate plastic baggies, two handguns, and about $2,600 in cash. The district attorney’s office dismissed the majority of those cases, including Whitley’s, saying police lacked sufficient evidence. The trials were nothing compared to what 2008 would bring. In May, the shooting on Martin Luther King Drive occurred.
Whitley told police he recognized the gunman: Richard Rodriguez, 20, of the Stixx Bloods, a rival East Side gang. The shooting was in retaliation for a years-old grudge, police said, namely the killing of Rodriguez’s father, a legendary leader of the Bloods, who was gunned down in a 2001 drive-by. Three ETGs have been sentenced in Jack Bledsoe’s slaying, but gangsters in the Stixx still blame Whitley’s cousin Arthur, an ETG kingpin. The shooting left Whitley hospitalized for two weeks, unable to work for a month and without a car. Worse was the loss of Brady. “It’s messed up. I don’t even like talking about it,” said Whitley, lapsing into silence.
“But I think about it.” After Darden’s suicide attempt, his Gatesville coach told him there was a chance they could work something out with the DWI. But suddenly, Darden wasn’t sure he wanted that. “Until now, I’ve been whoever they’ve told me,” he said. Needing time to figure himself out, he took a job at a telephone company based in the United Kingdom, texting people answers to random questions submitted online. About a month later, just past midnight Oct. 1, police accused Darden of engaging in behavior resembling a drug deal and running from them on the lot at Ferris and Bellinger. Darden said he was about to go to sleep when he realized he’d dropped his phone’s earpiece. He was scouring the lot when headlights turned on him.
According to a police report, TRU officers patrolling the area saw Darden walk up to a parked vehicle, reach quickly into its driver’s side, then stroll away. The vehicle sped away in an “unknown direction.” The officers said they approached Darden to investigate, but though they yelled “police, stop,” he fled. Darden said no vehicles — other than his own — were on the street. He said he never knew he was running from police because there are no streetlights here and the officers were in an unmarked car. “All I heard was someone say, ‘Stop (expletive) or I’m going to shoot,’” Darden said. When he felt the Taser sting into his back, he realized, ‘These ain’t no gang members.’” The officers say that when they caught Darden, he struggled and fought back, so they Tasered him nine times because he “did not appear to be affected.” Darden, who denies resisting, said he pleaded for them to stop and put his hands in the air, but they kicked him in the face and ribs, then dragged him by his collar across the concrete. Despite scouring the area with drug dogs, the police found nothing, charging Darden with resisting and evading arrest.
He has filed an Internal Affairs complaint alleging excessive force and has hired a lawyer to fight the charges. Whitley dreams of a country house far from the block. But that requires money, and his latest hope rests on a fanciful get-rich-quick scheme of manufacturing dolls with African-American hair so girls can practice how to braid. On top of his financial woes, Whitley is facing more legal obstacles.
The DA’s office recently added him on a two-year gang injunction it sought against 19 of the “most notorious” ETGs. The measure, similar to a restraining order, restricts certain activities in the area, such as hanging out or having alcohol. A violation can result in a misdemeanor charge. To Whitley, his inclusion seems ultimate proof that he can never escape. “Whether or not I want to cross this off my arm and cover it up,” he said, pointing to his ETG tattoo, “when they stop me, run my name, I’m going to be East Terrace, regardless of whether I told them, ‘Naw, I don’t bang no more. I don’t roll with that.’”
With each day’s passing, Whitley seems more unable and unwilling to make the necessary changes to improve his life, and increasingly resigned to his lot.
In late December, he quit Sterling Foods after ongoing conflicts with Hispanic co-workers. Now he’s looking for another job while fixing and selling cars he buys on the cheap.
Sitting on one of them recently, he sullenly mulled his future.
“I’m never going to be able to get away from this unless I move to another city or another part of San Antonio. It’s always going to stay the same.” As the sun set over the block, deserted save for a few old-timers sucking malt liquor like oxygen, Darden pulled his SUV up to Whitley’s home — his first appearance here in two months. “What’s up dawg,” he said. “Where you been, fool?” Whitley replied, beaming despite himself.
Ever since he was Tasered, Darden has been home. He’s spending his free time writing — he’s working on a memoir — attending church with his mother and hanging out with his son. One short story Darden penned before the ordeal revolves around a young man named Pookie, after Whitley’s nickname. Darden writes he’s “not quite a street dude, but not exactly what you call Corporate America material. All the smarts in the world, from both angles, but a little rough.” Pookie’s mother, concerned after hearing he may be included in a federal drug indictment, pushes him to hear a black politician speak. He so inspires Pookie that he amends past wrongs and starts over.
