Not ready to forgive himself
5 years after firing devastating shot, inmate focuses on responsibility
BRIDGEWATER - In the sprawling Old Colony Correctional Center, Anthony Warren is serving a 13- to 15-year sentence for firing a shot into the air that paralyzed 3-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott as she sang "Down by the Bay" on the third floor porch of a Dorchester three-decker.
Since that muggy night five years ago, Kai and her mother, Tonya David, have become symbols of forgiveness. In a poignant moment that continues to reverberate, Kai forgave Warren in open court in 2006, and more recently David has expressed the wish that he forgive himself. Their generosity has moved Warren to change his life, but he cannot yet forgive himself.
"Really no. I feel I owe so much more," Warren said last week in his first media interview since that errant shot. "I feel every day that I wake up it's a constant reminder of the things I did."
Sitting in the prison's sunlit visitors' room, Warren, 31, returned repeatedly to the theme of responsibility - to self, community, family. "I need to get my brothers to wake up," he said, "to realize what it means to be a black man in the community."
This spring Warren was one of nine inmates who appeared in a video, produced by the Boston youth organization Teen Empowerment, to warn young people against treading the path that led them here. Warren also thanks Kai for the forgiveness that, he said on camera, "gave me a second chance to really make a difference." He had apologized to her and her family in Suffolk Superior Court on April 13, 2006, the day he pleaded guilty to the shooting, and she proclaimed her forgiveness. "What you done to me was wrong," she told him in court that day. "But I still forgive him."
"For her to forgive me was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, besides seeing my daughter born," Warren recalled. "It was like six trillion tons of the planet earth was lifted off my back."
Warren is tall and more soft-spoken than the "colder, harder" persona he once affected would suggest. His run-ins with the law began shortly after he graduated from Somerville High School in 1996. He had been co-captain of the basketball team there and studied in the school's machine shop. "My first arrest was silly stuff," he said, "driving without a license, racing, things like that."
His criminal record now includes convictions and county jail time for motor vehicle infractions, assault and battery, drug offenses, and firearms violations. When he shot Kai on July 1, 2003, he was facing charges of possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute.
Warren recalls an environment of drugs and violence that beckoned after he lost the machinist job in Waltham that he held from 1998 to 2000.
"You go to work and make $8 an hour. You go back to your neighborhood and make $1,500 a day, $2,400" dealing drugs, he said. "Growing up as an adolescent you see some of your peers get stabbed or shot. You get desensitized to it." He knew more of revenge than forgiveness. "You did something to me," he said. "Now I'm doing something to you."
Warren is eligible for parole in 2017, two years before his release date. He worked in the prison kitchen until a fight cost him that job. He participates in inmate support groups and has completed one phase of the Alternative to Violence program.
"Anything that will make me a better man," he said. "In my situation, if you don't work at it, it can get worse."
"Mosquitoes inject their saliva. That's why mosquito bumps are itchy," she told a visitor. "Spiders don't get stuck on their own webs because they go on their tippy toes, and flies, when they land on the web, get stuck because it's using its flat feet."
This is the happy childhood David hoped her daughter would enjoy when she decided, on her way to the hospital five years ago, with memories of televangelist Benny Hinn lodged in the back of her mind, to forgive whoever had shot Kai.
"He always would say that the only way that healing can ever go forth is by forgiving," said David, 42. "Then many years go by and I'm hit with a decision of how am I going to react to all of this? The only thing I could think about was, I've got to let go of everything. If there's any way that she can be healed, I've got to forgive."
The result of that choice has been a freedom from the anger and bitterness that can swamp lives. "I set the tone for my family," David said. "Anthony Warren - in our household, we never talked about him. From day one, my focus has never been about him. My focus has been on five children. I released him so that my children and I would be able to live our lives. That's the power of forgiveness."
Forgiveness does not erase a lingering sadness. "My daughter would love to go play in the park across the street where other kids are playing and going down slides," David said. "Those things hurt."
Kai looks forward to attending day camp this summer. "Forgiveness is hard because you want to stay mad, but you know you just have to let out those emotions," Kai said. "If you keep them locked up inside they'll make your life worse. You won't be happy. When you're grouchy and mad, things don't look very nice in your life."
In court in 2006, Warren told Kai he sees his own daughter when he looks at her. His daughter is 6 now; his son is 7. He has not seen his children in two years, although he talks to them on the telephone. They and their mother are struggling, now that what he calls "the false security" of drug money is gone and he's incarcerated.
"My daughter tells me, 'Daddy, I don't care what they say about you. I still love you,' " Warren said and wiped away tears. "They're like the forgotten ones. I think about them all the time." He said he also thinks every day of Kai and her family and the effect of his actions.
"Me being the oldest male who was out there at the time, I should have used better judgment. Me not taking the responsibility of telling dudes to leave that situation alone led to it," Warren said. "I feel there's so much more I need to do. There's so much more I owe to my community. I had so much influence. There were 20 or 30 dudes who were looking up to me. I had so much more valuable I could have given them."
