IT WAS THE DECISION OF HIS LIFE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992                   TAG: 9201270221
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
IT WAS THE DECISION OF HIS LIFE
James doesn't often think about that night.
But if someone else takes him back, he'll admit it was a night that could have ruined two lives - one of them his own.
He was one squeeze away from killing a man.
He didn't pull the trigger. Now he's got a life of freedom ahead of him, instead of a life in jail.
And he's only in high school - 10th grade. Age 16.
It happened at a Roanoke Valley high school basketball game. James and some friends were hanging out in the bleachers; James kept his eye mostly on his girlfriend, a cheerleader. Another guy in the bleachers started making cracks about James' girl. Soon, they were pushing and shoving their way into the parking lot.
This guy was older - already graduated. But James held his own.
That's when a friend pulled up in a car, reached under the seat and pulled out a gun.
About 10 others were crowded around watching when a football coach came out and held back the other guy while James' friends tried to hold him back. The friend with the gun put it in James's hand and told him to shoot.
It was a loaded .25-caliber pistol that his friend had bought for $50. James held it in his right hand, finger on the trigger, and pointed it at the ground between him and his opponent.
"I told him I wanted to kill him," James recalled. If the football coach wasn't there and in the way, "I probably would have . . . I'd probably be in jail."
James doesn't remember being scared, just angry. The other guy started the fight and James wanted to hurt him. Bad.
After a few tense moments, the decision to kill or not to kill was made for James when one of his friends slipped behind him and pulled the ammunition clip out of the gun.
But before other friends could push him into a nearby car and get away, police cars sped into the parking lot. Officers pointed their guns at James. He thought he was going to die. He didn't want to move for fear they'd shoot.
"I still had it in my hand," he said. "That made me scared. I didn't know what to do. I just stood there with it in my hand for a long time."
Finally, he slowly bent over and put the gun down.
They threw him on the ground and handcuffed him.
At the police station, he waited for his mother and worried about how angry she would be. He was surprised to find she wasn't angry at all, just glad to find him alive.
Police let James' mother take him home that night. No charges were placed, but James was suspended from school for a month. "When I wasn't in school, I had a lot of time to think," he said. "It all could have been avoided."
That also gave James time to talk with his mother about what had happened and what he was doing with his life.
"She just told me I need to choose my friends better, to watch who I hang around with. She told me to start thinking more, thinking about my actions."
The boy who gave him the gun that night is now in jail on other charges. James, on the other hand, plans to attend college after he graduates next year.
\ James is not this young man's real name. He agreed to tell his story if the newspaper agreed not to use his name or identify his school.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB