Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302140094
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THEY ALL TRIED TO SAVE HIM, BUT THE ENEMY WAS WITHIN
PERCY JOHNSON had two families - the one he was born into and the one composed of the teachers, counselors and probation officers who thought they could save him from the streets. Now, both are grieving for the 17-year-old.
He was the 15th Roanoke teen-ager murdered or charged with murder in the past three years.
"That was one of our babies, gone to the street and violence again," said teacher Janet Claytor, still absorbing the news at the Alternative Education Center.
Most of the murdered teens were at the center at one time or other. It's the intensive care unit of the school system, the place for kids who need large doses of attention.
In the first hour of Saturday, Jan. 23, Percy Johnson III crumpled under seven shots from a semiautomatic weapon.
He was a stocky guy, 5-foot-7, and said to weigh over 250 pounds.
He loved the Chicago Bulls. A few years ago, he talked about becoming a cop. He was sharp at math and science, but quit school anyway.
He wound up with a police record heftier than his academic one - a long string of shopliftings, thefts and assaults. Just over a year ago, when he was 16, police found him carrying an Advil bottle containing two rocks of crack cocaine.
In the end, Percy Johnson perished in an ego spat over a 5-buck bet and a leather coat - the kind of thing fists would have settled not so long ago.
Teachers who care for Roanoke's most vulnerable young people tell you that most of them, even the poorest and least attended-to, don't end up like Percy Johnson.
"The majority of our young people are out here working honest," dropout counselor John Canty said. Some go to college, but nobody hears enough about them.
Counselors puzzle over why some kids straighten up. Young drug dealers go legit. Common sense snaps into place. It happens.
No one knows why it didn't happen to Percy Johnson.
But a lot of people tried to nudge him toward a long and healthy life. All the way, he had a lot going for him.
Mary Hackley, Roanoke's director of elementary education, remembers Percy, nicknamed "P.J." He was a fourth-grader at Forest Park Elementary School when she was principal.
"I just see the child's face," she said. He was chubby-faced, mischievous.
"When you would confront Percy with anything he'd done, he'd drop his head. He wouldn't always admit it, but he wouldn't deny it, either. You could appeal to him. He was an intelligent little fellow. He could catch on to his academics when he put his mind to it." There were B's on his report cards, and there were F's.
Getting into trouble
Percy's juvenile court record says his mother and father split up in 1986, after 19 years of marriage. Percy was 10.
While his mother worked, his grandmother, Gertrude Cunningham, watched over him and his older siblings, sister Marlo and brother Antonio.
"On the pretty days, like in the spring, Mrs. Cunningham would walk to school with Percy," Hackley said. "She was a very loving lady, but she was not one to make excuses for Percy. No matter when I would call his grandmother or his mom, they were quick to respond."
"All three of the kids were close to their grandmother," said Percy's father, Percy Johnson Jr., a truck driver for Clements Auto Parts. Percy's mother, Antoinette "Toni" Cunningham Johnson, declined to be interviewed for this story.
At 12, Percy was accused of shoplifting three packs of batteries from Hills Department Store. The charge was dropped.
At 13, he walked out of the Sears store at Valley View Mall wearing stolen $6.88 headphones. Court records say his mother grounded him for three weeks.
At 14, a caseworker noted that he wanted to finish school and become a police officer.
Around then, he broke into his next-door neighbor's place. Then he stole a bicycle chained outside the movie theater at Valley View.
He was put under the supervision of juvenile workers, but they said there were limits to what they could do. He wasn't being supervised enough at home, they said.
By the seventh grade, he was walking out of class at Addison Middle School. Teachers tried to pull him back. "You're bright, Percy!" science teacher Vonnie Lewis wrote on a 1989 report card. "Let's get the work made up!"
He hit a female neighbor in the mouth. He and his buddies were accused of assaulting a man and taking $1.20, another dismissed charge.
By the next year, teachers were discouraged. "You are dropping in all your work and behavior in class," Lewis warned. "Please work on attitude and behavior! You can do better."
Shortcuts in life
There was another assault charge in 1990, and Percy was sent to the juvenile detention center at Coyner Springs.
Court workers reported that he showed little remorse.
Later, he and friends tore up a moped trying to wrest it from its chain on a mall post. His grandmother paid $62.29 in restitution. Percy was barred from the mall, but he went back anyway and was charged with trespassing.
Juvenile court records say that Percy was "nonchalant" about his convictions and that his mother wasn't sure he was always guilty.
Probation officer Beth Cunningham wrote: "Percy appears to have grown up without limits, and his mother has probably made excuses for him. It is difficult for Percy to be honest with anyone or himself. He is a streetwise kid that has learned to manipulate the system and take shortcuts in life."
All along, people tried to steer him back into the mainstream. As an 11-year-old, he played basketball at High Street Baptist Church under coach Douglas Franklin Payne. "When we had him, he was a fine kid," Payne said. Later, Percy did court-ordered community service at the YMCA Family Center on Orange Avenue. Again, staffers took him under their wing.
A court evaluation says that by 1991 he was at a crossroads. "The attraction of fast money is appealing to him," it said.
"He has very good interpersonal skills," court workers wrote, and "the potential to excel academically and athletically."
But he was wasting his potential. "Percy wants the good life but wants to cut corners to get there," caseworkers warned last year. "He's often wherever trouble is and hangs out with peers who all have criminal records."
In 1991, three days before his 16th birthday, he and friends broke into a Franklin County gun shop and stole handguns. The crack charge came two months later.
"He does not deny his involvement with drugs and seems willing to accept a possible state commitment," court workers reported. He seems anxious to do his time and get it over with." But a circuit judge suspended his commitment to the state Department of Youth and Family Services. He remained on probation.
`They live only for today'
Court files alone may make Percy Johnson seem menacing.
"The courts see him one way," counselor Canty said. "We see him another."
Teens with criminal records aren't lost causes to him. "We see them as kids, because we see them every day. We can really see the child come out," without the defenses that arise when they're in court.
What people don't understand, he said, is that young people fascinated with drugs and guns are playing the same risk-taking games that teen-agers have always played, only with deadly stakes. Their toys are lethal.
"They're not just gangsters. They're just living a dream."
"They know that any moment somebody could kill them," Canty said. "They may talk about tomorrow, but they live only for today."
Percy didn't come to school much after the eighth grade.
"It was this gangster thing, and he got caught up in that," Canty said. "Up until then, he was a pretty good kid . . ."
Nearly all Percy's pals are incarcerated, "getting ready to be incarcerated" or hanging out on the streets, according to Canty.
"For the most part, all of them could have been successful, if they'd tried."
Public defender Marian Kelley represented Percy on a criminal charge in 1991. Now she's defending his alleged killer, 18-year-old Dwayne Carlos Miller.
She now casts her former client as the bad guy.
"I'm hearing a lot of people say that he was a particularly violent person," she said of Percy, "and in order to build his reputation on the street, he was capable of violent acts."
He threatened Miller and other teens - "some pretty nasty threats," she said. She was not specific.
"My understanding was that he was the leader of the posse," an informal gang of Roanoke teens. "He was known to carry a gun."
In his last years, there was talk between Percy's family and probation officers of sending Percy out of town - maybe into the Job Corps. It never happened.
At the same time, Percy's grandmother could only do so much for him.
She guided his older brother and sister through their teens, said Ray Williams, one of Percy's former teachers.
But by Percy's adolescence, she had trouble keeping up with him. "She was just too old," Williams said. "Her heart was about to give out."
Percy was in the Coyner Springs detention center when his grandmother died last March. Juvenile authorities let him out for her funeral.
Fatal confrontation
The court records reveal little about Percy's life last year, except that he was accused of throwing a bottle in the street.
About 1 a.m. on Jan. 23, he was riding in a car with two young women on Bridge Street in Norwich, an industrial neighborhood in Southwest Roanoke.
Percy spotted Miller walking on the bridge spanning the Roanoke River.
Twelve days earlier, Percy had tangled with Miller's best friend, Sharieff Omar, over a $5 basketball bet. Omar says Percy robbed him of his $250 leather coat.
Another time, police say, Johnson bashed Miller in the ear with a handgun.
Out on the bridge that night last month, Percy and Miller yelled "What's up, punk?" at each other, a woman testified at a hearing last week.
Police say Percy was shot seven times. Miller's lawyer says he fired in self-defense. Authorities say the last shot was to his forehead.
Percy's sister, Marlo, went to their father's home at 3:50 a.m. to tell him Percy had died.
The father went to Community Hospital. "I just had to see my son."
"When I seen his face at the hospital, I said he looked like he was sleeping. He looked like he was at peace. If he did have any worries, he knew it was all over now."
Because he wasn't living with him, Percy Johnson Jr. didn't keep close tabs on his son. "I knew very little about what he was doing. . . . I'm quite sure his mother did everything she could."
"He just got in the wrong crowd," the father said. "I talked to all three of my kids and told them to stay out of the streets or something like this would happen. I never thought in my wildest dreams that it would."
Both he and Percy's mother have said they regretted the shootings around Miller's mother's home that followed Percy's murder. They are urging calm. They want everybody, including themselves, to get on with life.
"I want it over with," Percy Johnson Jr. said. "I want him at peace. Just leave his name alone. He lived, and he died. It's over with."
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