Anthony Garrett, the man charged in the slaying of a 7-year-old Cabrini-Green child, had just finished a part-time job a few weeks ago: He was hired to work as a baseball umpire and to act as a role model for the children of the public housing development.
One of his employers described him as a ”gentle-spirited” man who was
”always good with the kids.” Yet the portrait of Garrett that emerges from police officials and court records is one of a career gangbanger with an affinity for guns.
”He just got caught in the mix of problems that exist among young people,” said Al Carter, the man who hired Garrett to umpire at Cabrini-Green as part of a gang intervention program. ”He did what he thought had to be done. I sit with my heart about to drop out of my chest because I still don`t want to believe that it was him.”
The arrest of Garrett, 33, for Tuesday`s sniper slaying of Dantrell Davis was not the first time the former Army veteran with a lengthy record of weapons violations had been charged with killing someone with a gun at Cabrini-Green.
In 1981, he and two other reputed street gang members, Jose Collins and Willie Malone, were arrested and charged with the murder of Calvin V. Macklin, a rival gang member, inside a stairwell of a Cabrini-Green building at 1159 N. Cleveland Ave.
Neither they nor anyone else was ever convicted of the crime.
Garrett, then 22, allegedly boasted to police that he was ”chief” of his gang, whose membership he put at ”maybe 90 soldiers,” court records show.
He was arrested on the same day that Mayor Jane Byrne announced plans to move into Cabrini-Green, ostensibly to calm residents` fears about crime there and to beef up police in the area.
Prosecutors later dropped their charges against Collins and Malone but took Garrett to trial for Macklin`s murder. The motive, they alleged, was retaliation for a shooting incident in which Garrett suffered a bullet wound to his foot.
Garrett`s alleged confession to the murder, which was introduced into evidence but later recanted at trial, claimed that he killed Macklin with a .38-caliber revolver as he fled up a flight of stairs.
Garrett was acquitted of the murder in 1982, apparently because Judge R. Eugene Pincham, now retired, questioned the credibility of some state witnesses.
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According to the court file, Pincham repeatedly took over questioning of some witnesses before deciding to free Garrett. At one point, the records show, Pincham expressed surprise when a detective testified that Garrett`s mother, Yvonne Garrett, told police she suspected the son of murder.
On Thursday, Pincham said he did not recall the case, adding: ”You don`t lock up people because of what they might do 15 years later.”
When arrested for the Davis boy`s murder this week, Garrett was out on bond awaiting a ruling by the Illinois Appellate Court in another weapons case. Records of that case, involving Garrett`s arrest by Chicago police in 1991, contend that he kept a loaded handgun in a bed in his Cabrini-Green apartment, which police found during a sweep of the housing development.
But Jack Stein, supervising judge in the Skokie branch of Cook County Circuit Court, ordered Garrett freed Jan. 21 after ruling that police had unlawfully seized the gun. The state`s attorney`s office on Feb. 19 appealed Stein`s decision to the Appellate Court.
Records show he was convicted nine times between 1976 and 1987. Six of the nine were weapons and related firearms charges. The only prison sentence he received was for a 1987 illegal use of weapons charges.
Even though Garrett had a long arrest record, his lawyer, Peter Vilkelis, depicted him as a man who was trying to turn his life around by contributing his services to the community. This past summer, Garrett, who was known by the nickname ”Quabine,” had been making $8 a game as an umpire for Cabrini children in the local Near North Little League. Along with believing he could be a role model for children, Carter thought the job would help Garrett better his own life.
”I needed him out there because of his influence with young people and because of his knowledge of the turf wars (in Cabrini),” said Carter, an area manager in the anti-gang Chicago Intervention Network. ”They looked up to him because he was an adult black man. Anthony was there not just to umpire but to try to steer these young people away from the fighting.”
The Chicago Initiative, a program that emerged in the wake of the Los Angeles riots with a goal of curtailing urban violence, provided some funding for the baseball program.
”We knew that he had had problems all along,” Carter said, ”and we`d been working with Anthony since he was about 15 years old.”
Garrett served three years in the Army as a specialist fourth class and was trained in marksmanship, according to the state`s attorney`s office. Carter said that Garrett had decided to join the Army as a potential way out of the violent inner-city existence.
”I think he went away to get away from the garbage going on in here,”
Carter said. ”It was a way of getting away.”
People who knew and worked with Garrett had different assessments of his temperament-some said he was easily angered, others said he was good with kids and just got caught in the inner-city cycle of violence because he grew up in Cabrini and had gotten his own role models there.
”Most people have been surprised because he was trying to turn his life around,” said Julia Burgess, executive director of Demicco Youth Services, which worked with Carter to set up baseball programs at Cabrini. ”And he was good with kids.”
”He was more forceful than others,” said one coach who works as an attorney in the Loop. ”But he was angry; you know how some people are angry inside. You could never discuss a call with him.”
Carter`s baseball league sprung out of the African American Youth League a few years ago, with the leaders turning the glass-strewn Carson Park into a baseball diamond amid the rough streets of Cabrini-Green. The league now has about 350 participants, ages 9 to 15, who play on about 27 teams.
The league has won acclaim, and Bob Muzikowski, an insurance executive who helped collect corporate sponsors and find volunteer coaches, was named one of President Bush`s points of light for his work.
Muzikowski said he met Garrett last year and helped him get jobs as an umpire and as a maintenance man at a health club.
”He was always a gentle-spirited guy and good with the kids,”
Muzikowski said.
As more details about Garrett`s past emerged Thursday, so did details about the police version of the fatal shooting death of Dantrell Davis on his way to Jenner Elementary School on Tuesday.
Cook County Circuit Judge Robert Bastone ordered Garrett held without bond, and prosecutors began presenting to a Cook County grand jury police findings in the murder investigation, including a statement attributed to Garrett in which he allegedly detailed his actions just before and after the shooting.
During a brief court hearing Thursday, Garrett sat quietly, wearing a sweatshirt, gym shoes and blue jeans.
Vilkelis, Garrett`s attorney, charged that Garrett`s alleged confession to police was obtained after Garrett had been in custody for nearly 24 hours. Vilkelis said Garrett`s statement to police was coerced and that alibi witnesses will testify that Garrett was not at the site of the shooting Tuesday.
According to prosecutors, Garrett said that he went to a vacant 10th-floor apartment at 1157-59 N. Cleveland Ave. Tuesday morning and there fired an AR-15 assault-style rifle, aiming at a group of six people standing around the entrance to the high-rise building where Dantrell lived.
The weapon, similar to that used by U.S. military forces, remained unaccounted for Thursday. It was not equipped with a scope, police said.
After the shooting, Garrett allegedly handed the rifle to a fellow gang member on the eighth floor and continued on down to ground level. There, he learned that the person shot was a boy and sought an alibi, police officials said.
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According to law enforcement officials, Garrett sought out a part-time guard in the housing development whom he knew to be a fellow street gang member and implored the guard to give him an alibi. The guard agreed to do so but later told police of the overture, officials said.
”He confided to the security guard that he had shot and killed that little boy and urged him not to tell anyone,” said Assistant State`s Atty. Garry Howard.
”It is sort of still difficult for me to believe that this is going on, that it`s real,” Carter said Thursday. ”All I can really do is pray for him and keep hoping that things turn in a different direction.”