Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (9 page)

The police got to Three Fountains West very quickly. They had been setting up for an unrelated detail nearby when they heard the shots reported in the 911 calls. Still, by the time they arrived, the shooters had fled, leaving what looked like a scene from a David Lynch movie. A green 2002 Honda Accord had struck a utility pylon and flipped onto its roof. Its four occupants were now scattered. Wayne Wilson, age twenty, the driver, was on the grass complaining of a pain in his back. Jaylen Grice, twenty, who was with him in the front, felt pain all over his body. Both were taken to the hospital. Tarell Davis, nineteen, was not there when the police arrived but returned later, apparently uninjured. Kenneth Mills-Tucker, nineteen, lay still, not complaining at all. He had staggered a short distance and fallen about a hundred feet from the car. He’d been shot in the left side of his torso; another bullet had grazed the right side of his abdomen. Police believe the gunfight took place right outside the administrative offices of Three Fountains West because casings were found in the parking lot there. Kenneth and his crew did not get very far. The car overturned yards away as they tried to head south on Moller Road, leaving the area in darkness for several hours after it struck the utility pole. The coroner’s verdict report reads, “Medical intervention was unsuccessful and the decedent was pronounced nonviable at 3:57 am.”

Around the time Amy Sanders and her family were crossing the Mason-Dixon line on their way from Houston to Grove City to see Jaiden inert but still technically alive, Kenneth became the second person whose story is told in this book to be shot and the first to die over the twenty-four-hour period covered. Jaiden was the youngest; Kenneth was the oldest—only three days shy of his twentieth birthday.

In the picture used for his obituary, Kenneth, who was also known as “kj,” looks quite the dandy, wearing a white shirt and bright white hat, tilted slightly to the right, and a matching bow tie and vest with gray and white diagonal stripes. His closed-mouth smile makes the most of a
prominent chin and the goatee growing on it. Formal and handsome in his bearing and playful with his clothing, were he not black he could be an extra in
The Great Gatsby.

Apparently, he had been looking forward to bidding farewell to his teens—his Twitter handle was his birthday, @Nov.26th. One of his last tweets, sent on the evening he died, read, “Out with the gang Dooney Wayne n Rell what’s going on tonight. My last weekend being a teenager.” According to the coroner’s report, the four had left a party at the Three Fountains apartment complex around 3:13 a.m.

As the sun rose, Twitter hummed with news of his death. In one exchange at 5:21 a.m., a friend commiserated with Kenneth’s girlfriend, Denise: “yu might be tha last voice he heard, no one can imagine what yu goin thru smh it’s hard for everybody but keep ur head up.” Denise had not heard. “what are you talking about,” she wrote. “kj dead” came the reply. “No TF he’s not what are yu talking about what’s your number where’s KJ.”

Those who know what the shooting was about have not come forward. If the police know, they are not saying. Meanwhile, Kenneth’s assailant has not been found.

D
EAD MEN TELL NO
tales. For each young person who fell that day there is a story beyond his death. The challenge, in compiling this book, was to unearth as many of those stories as possible. Finding family members was not always easy. There were short news reports, usually written by whichever general-assignment journalist was unlucky enough to be on the weekend shift. Occasionally, they included a quote from a family member. But often not. After that, there were online obituary notices, which provided names of parents, siblings, funeral directors, and churches. If the shooting had happened in or near the home, families often moved away—as Nicole had done. So contacting people was a mixture of persistence and luck: trawling online phone directories for names listed in online obituaries in the hope that there might be an address; messaging
people on Facebook; literally walking streets and asking if anyone knew the family; approaching the funeral directors who buried the victims and the pastors who eulogized them; asking local journalists if they would share leads.

If any of those attempts bore fruit, then came the tough part: approaching the families.

Talking to the relatives of bereaved children is inherently intrusive. The issue is whether the intrusion is at all welcome. It is no small thing to trust a person you don’t know with the story of your dead child. Journalists are not entitled to such stories. But often parents are genuinely heartened to know that someone from outside their immediate circle is even interested. They are relieved to hear that someone, somewhere noted that the young person whom they bore and reared has been summarily removed from the planet.

Conversely, there are others who not only do not want to speak but resent being asked. The relative of one child in this book responded to my request for an interview with this angry voicemail: “Don’t call my phone. You’re a stupid son of a bitch. And I’ve got your number. And I’m gonna give it to my lawyer. And I don’t want anything to do with your dumb ass. Don’t you ever fucking call my phone. You bitch.” A family member, whom I’d already interviewed, had given me her number.

The truth is, you never know until you ask. I asked Kenneth’s grandfather. I found his name through the list of family members in Kenneth’s online obituary and then matched it to an identical name in the online phone directory. According to the census, his address was in a neighborhood with a substantial black community. I figured that of all Kenneth’s relatives, his grandfather was most likely to have a landline. So I called.

A woman answered and said I’d called the right place but he wasn’t home. I explained my idea for this book and she was very enthusiastic. “Thank God. Somebody should write about this,” she said. “They should teach children in first and second grade to stay away from guns. It’s a waste. The guys who shot him weren’t even looking for him,” she said. I asked if she had a contact number for either of his parents.

“Wait and I’ll call him,” she said, referring to the grandfather. “He’s in. I just thought you were a collector,” she laughed. The grandfather gave me Kenneth’s father’s cell phone number. In hindsight, I should have texted his dad. That would have given him time to process the inquiry in his own time. An unexpected call from an unfamiliar number in the middle of the day from someone wanting to talk about your recently murdered son would throw anyone off. I know that now. But I called. I told him how I’d got his number, what the book was about, and asked if I could see him when I came to Indianapolis in a few weeks.

“Where did you get my number from?” he asked. I explained again. “How did you get their number?” he asked. I explained. “How did you find our names?” he asked. I explained. And so it went on. Understandably, he couldn’t see past being blindsided. I apologized for putting him on the spot and asked if we could talk at a better time. He said he’d call me back that night.

I immediately texted an apology and a further explanation of the project. He didn’t call back that night. Nor the night after that. I left it for a couple of days and texted again and then once again before I left for Indianapolis. He never called back. When I arrived in Indianapolis five months later, I called the grandfather’s house and left a message. When they didn’t get back to me, I went to their home and left a note at their door. By the time I got back to the hotel, they’d left a voicemail while I was driving. It was his grandfather’s partner. The message was four seconds long. She simply repeated her number and said, “Don’t call again.”

I’
D GONE TO
I
NDIANAPOLIS
in April 2014, almost exactly five months after Kenneth’s death, for the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, which was being held in the downtown convention center, just twenty minutes away from where he was shot. The sense of fear and helplessness exhibited in those 911 calls the night Kenneth died—the infantilized man unable to defend his family and seeking protection from the state; domestic cocoons pierced by the chaos of the street;
law-abiding citizens paralyzed by vagabonds run wild—is the currency in which the NRA trades. The 911 dispatcher instructed the caller to sit and wait; the slogan for the NRA convention that year was “Stand and fight.”

When the NRA comes to town, they make their presence felt. A huge banner straddling an entire block of the city center promised “Nine Acres of Guns and Gear.” The displays inside didn’t disappoint. In a cavernous exhibition hall showcasing the industry’s finest killing machines, scores of white men (few other demographics were present) aimed empty barrels into the middle distance and pondered their purchases. All the big names were there: Mossberg (“Built rugged. Proudly American”); Smith & Wesson (“Advanced by design”); and Henry (“Made in America. Or not made at all”).

The relationship some of the men walking these halls have with guns is romantic. At times it even borders on the sexual. The touch, smell, and power of a firearm come together in their own erotic alchemy. “Pick up a rifle, a pistol, a shotgun, and you’re handling a piece of American history,” writes Chris Kyle in
American Gun.
“Take the gun up now, and the smell of black powder and saltpeter sting the air. Raise the rifle to your shoulder and look into the distance. You see not a target but a whole continent of potential, of great things to come, a promising future . . . but also toil, trial, and hardship. The firearm in your hands is a tool to help you through it.”
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The convention hosts scores of seminars ranging from “Wild Game Cooking: From Field to Table” to “The Men and Guns of D-Day.” But by far the most popular are those premised on the notion that you are fighting for your life. In the “Home Defense Concepts” seminar, Rob Pincus, a taut, muscular figure with a trimmed goatee, encouraged several hundred attendees to visualize the room in their house where they would barricade themselves in the event of a burglary and to “re-create that emotional component” of a break-in by having a dry run with the whole family. Families should have a code word. “Think about where you are in the morning and in the evening,” he told them as they imagined the best hiding place. Running through the arsenal that might be most appropriate, he suggested a 20 gauge for defense, or maybe a 9mm,
“which can be a lot more manageable.” When thinking of the firearm you’d use, bear the following in mind: “What’s the practical distance? What’s the predictable distance? What’s the predictable size? What are the shooting skills?”

In other words, imagine a burglary in vivid detail, and then make sure you are always prepared for that eventuality. Rather than succumb to the complacency that it would not happen or is unlikely to happen, develop a state of alertness in which you have embodied and embedded the notion that it could happen to you at any moment, and develop the reflexes to respond effectively and accordingly. Basically, live your life in fear of threat and violation. Be stimulated by the possibility that someone, somewhere might be poised to invade and attack. “You have to do the drill,” he stressed. “You have to create the stimulus.”

But the threat the NRA evokes is not only to an individual or even a family; it is to American civilization itself. “In order to justify the necessity for firearms, the gun-rights narrative must continually reaffirm the frontier spirit, which makes self-defense essential and militia duty compulsory,” writes James Welch, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, in his essay “The Ethos of the Gun.” “Despite the fact that the frontier has long ceased to be a common experience for Americans, the staunchest gun advocates go to great pains to maintain a sense of the world as a dangerous, insecure place.”
⁴

The NRA defends the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Adopted in 1791, it states, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The assumption that this relates to an individual’s rights is widespread but by no means uncontested.