In video, a message to victim
Inmate thanks girl for giving him chance to change
Anthony Warren sat for 10 minutes on a wooden bench in a prison chapel two weeks ago answering questions, talking in detail about the consequences of crime and the painful reality of life behind bars.
The interviewers had spent three hours recording conversations with convicted murderers and armed robbers at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater for a film aimed at demystifying the iconic gangster image that plagues urban streets. They did not know that Warren was the man in 2003 who shot and paralyzed 3-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott, the little girl who stunned the city by offering Warren forgiveness from her wheelchair.
Then Warren told them he had a message for Kai, turning the educational video into a lesson about redemption.
"She gave me a second chance to really make a difference, to show people out there that forgiveness is good," Warren, who is 31, said as he leaned forward and stared directly into the camera. "So I want to thank her."
The 90-second video clip was played for the first time yesterday at Dorchester House during a press conference that designated May as Peace Month. Kai sat in the front row, her hair tied in neat pigtails, flashing toothy smiles for a crush of television cameras and photographers.
"I want to say to him thank you for making an apology video," Kai, dwarfed by a circle of microphones, said in whisper. "You can inspire so many other people by telling them not to carry around guns and don't do bad things."
Warren was one of nine inmates interviewed for the video, "Voices from Behind the Wall," which will be shown in its entirety May 10 at an annual youth peace conference at the Strand Theater in Dorchester. The video and conference were spearheaded by The Center for Teen Empowerment, which hopes to distribute the film as a teaching tool.
"One of the goals is to help people understand the consequences of crime," said Stanley Pollack, founder and executive director of the center. "The other is to humanize people that have been thrown away by society."
The film was organized by Darrell Jones, 41, an inmate at Old Colony who has served 22 years of a life sentence for murder. Jones worked through Councilor Chuck Turner's office and helped enlist Pollack.
The inmates in the video urge teenagers to resist the powerful lure of vice and crime's easy money, Pollack said. They warn young people about the loneliness of prison, the separation from family, and the pain of not being able to watch their children grow up.
Most of the friends they ran with on the streets have not come to see them in prison, the men said. The people who gave them the hardest time when they got in trouble on the outside - their mothers, their uncles, a big brother - are the ones who have stuck by them.
Warren was recruited for the film by Jones, and the producers were not aware of his high-profile past. "I didn't know who he was," Pollack said yesterday.
Warren apologized privately to Kai and her family in Suffolk Superior Court in April 2006, when he was sentenced to 13 to 15 years in prison for a slew of charges stemming from the shooting, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious injury.
His apology came moments after Kai told him in open court: "What you done to me was wrong, but I still forgive him."
That cycle of forgiveness and redemption continued yesterday when Kai's mother, Tonya David, dabbed her eyes with a tissue and stepped to a podium after Warren's face disappeared from the video screen.
"I pray that he will take one step further," David said as her voice cracked, "that he will find inner peace in himself by forgiving himself."
David paused, looked down at Kai, and took a deep breath.
"Forgiveness is the way," David said.
