Victim's mother thanks killer for admitting guilt, but cannot forgive him

By John R. Ellement, Globe staff

The mother of a 17-year-old honor student who was mistakenly murdered in a 1995 drug-related shooting thanked the man who killed her son for admitting his guilt.

But Anna Worrell, speaking in Suffolk Superior Court today, said she could not find it in her heart to forgive John Tibbs of Roxbury for murdering her only son, Tennyson Drakes.

"I am glad that you admitted you were the one. I thank you for that,'' said Worrell, who flew up from Barbados to see her son's killer sent to prison. "But I can't tell you, I can't sit here, and tell you that I forgive you. God hasn't brought me that far.''

Worrell's sister, Boston public school teacher Maureen Worrell, with whom Drakes was then living, told Tibbs she will pray for him and that God has instructed her to forgive him.

Drakes, an honor student at Dorchester High School who had been admitted to Wentworth Institute of Technology, was with friends on Nelson Street on Aug. 11, 1995 when a motorcycle drove up with two men on board. The passenger started shooting, killing Drakes and wounding three others.

The survivors identified Marlon Passley, with whom they had been feuding, as the shooter. Passley was eventually convicted of first-degree murder and faced life imprisonment without parole.

But in 1999, state and federal investigators convinced a drug dealer, Eddie Mills, to testify against his friends and Tibbs was charged in 2001. Passley’s conviction has since been erased.

Mills testified last fall that Tibbs shot Drakes, but the jury at the trial deadlocked. As a new trial was about to start this week, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office and Tibbs's attorney,John H. Cunha, negotiated a plea deal. The deal was approved today by Superior Court Judge Peter M. Lauriat.

Tibbs, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, was sentenced to nine to 10 years in state prison for Drakes's killing and the wounding of the three others. The state time will be served concurrently with a 27-year federal sentence he is now serving for an unrelated Boston homicide. Tibbs is getting credit for seven years already served and will have a pending drug possession case dismissed.

In court today, Tibbs stared as the women as they delivered their victim impact statements, but he did not speak and did not show any obvious emotions during the half-hour proceeding. He was led away in handcuffs

Tibbs is not expected to be paroled until 2020.

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