The tragedy of Dantrell Davis was not only in the way he died. It also was in the way he lived.
What everyone would remember was one moment of violence-a 7-year-old on his way to school, felled by a sniper`s bullet. But what people did not see, and did not care to see, were the years of turmoil and pain that made up his life.
Only months before he died, Dantrell was severely burned in a fire after his mother left him alone in their Cabrini-Green apartment. In school, classmates taunted him with cries of ”BD,” their shorthand for ”behavioral disorder.” He once told a social worker he wanted to commit suicide.
Yet the portrait of Dantrell that emerges from family, friends, teachers and state records is also one of a resilient boy with a survivor`s will and an electric smile.
”I hoped his life would`ve been a lot better than most kids`,” said Tony Seals, Dantrell`s boxing coach.
No one will ever know.
Dantrell Tremaine Davis was born to Annette Freeman, then 15, on July 31, 1985, in Cabrini Hospital on the West Side.
Annette listed her address in the Morgan Park neighborhood, at the family home of her uncle, Jerome”King Shorty” Freeman, who police say still runs a notorious Chicago street gang from Stateville Correctional Center.
By most accounts, though, Dantrell was a child of Cabrini. Annette`s mother, Janice, has lived at the housing development since 1979, she said, and Annette has resided in her own apartment in the same building for about four years.
Dantrell, who also was called Danny and Danny Boy, would visit his grandmother regularly. He liked video games, pizza and the color purple. He liked going to carnivals with his mother.
The mother-son relationship sometimes resembled that of brother-sister, Janice Freeman said. ”Danny looked after her and she looked after him,” she said.
To some outsiders it seemed that Dantrell, Annette`s only child, was the more mature of the two. ”He was very consoling,” said Suzette Crittle-Gibson, a counselor at Demicco Social Services who worked with Annette and Dantrell in recent months.
His mother one day began to cry because she couldn`t afford to buy Dantrell new gym shoes, Crittle-Gibson said. Dantrell, she said, told her,
”Mama, don`t cry.”
At some point, Dantrell acquired both courage and stoicism.
When he was 6, Dantrell was burned over nearly a quarter of his body in a fire, state records show.
”It was clear that the pain was hitting him in waves,” recalled one visitor to his hospital bed at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
”He would make faces that indicated he was in pain, his mouth would open, but he never made any sounds that indicated he was in pain. He acted in a way a mature adult might trying to endure the pain.”
Once when Annette Freeman saw him in agony, she began to cry. ”Finally, in the middle of his pain (Dantrell) had to turn to his mother and try and calm her down,” a state report said.
The fire occurred about 4 a.m. March 31. Annette had left Dantrell alone in the apartment, police said, and a neighbor who heard Dantrell screaming rescued him.
Dantrell later told a counselor that he didn`t try to flee the apartment because he had been told not to leave. According to a state investigative report, ”When the apartment (was) burning, the minor remained in the home, was running around the home and hysterically screaming, `Where is everybody, why am I alone?` The mother had instructed the minor to remain in and not leave the home.”
The second- and third-degree burns covered parts of his face, arms, legs and stomach. One visitor described the left side of his face as pink and his fingers as ”crispy.” He underwent skin-grafting surgery, and stayed in the Maywood hospital for a month.
State reports show that Dantrell worried about changing color. ”Dantrell is concerned that the new scars will make him white. He wants assurance that he will remain black. (He was told) that when his skin comes back it will come back black and not white.”
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During his hospitalization, Dantrell endeared himself to the Loyola staff. ”He was really lovable, even though he had this kind of hard exterior,” said Kathy Supple, a clinical nurse specialist in the burn unit.
Dantrell told hospital workers stories about life at Cabrini, describing the gang warfare and drug trade. ”We used to say he was 7 going on 17,”
Supple said.
His mother and father, Kelvin Davis, were regular visitors, and Annette Freeman continued to bring him to the hospital after his discharge for additional therapy, Supple said.
State reports said the mother felt guilty about the fire, but Dantrell said he never blamed her. ”He loves his mother very much and is sure that she loves him.”
Criminal child neglect charges against Freeman were dropped by Cook County prosecutors in September.
The state Department of Children and Family Services took custody of Dantrell for several days while he was in the hospital, then gave temporary custody to the paternal grandmother. In May, Freeman regained custody under a court order requiring her not to leave Dantrell by himself and to attend parenting skills classes at Demicco.
”We were working on creating a nurturing, safe and loving environment,” said Gibson, the Demicco counselor.
School created other challenges for Dantrell. He told one state investigator that he was in a class ”for bad boys.” The boy added, ”I`m in this class because I have a bad mind.”
The precise term was behavior disorder classes, but Dantrell had grasped the basic concept. Descriptions of his academic skills ranged from average to ”extremely bright,” but he had trouble with what educators called
”socialization skills.”
Before the fire, he was enrolled at LeMoyne School on the North Side, a school offering an ”early intervention education” program for children deemed to have learning disabilities.
After the fire, teachers at LeMoyne told state investigators that Dantrell was an angry child who had to be restrained during ”severe temper tantrums” and who threatened teachers and students. He once bit a school psychologist.
”At one point, the child had stated that he wanted to commit suicide,”
the report said.
Dantrell missed more than 20 days of school before the fire.
In September, Dantrell began attending Jenner School, across the street from his Cabrini apartment, at the request of Demicco Social Services, so he could be closer to the counseling center.
His time at Jenner showed hints of promise for Dantrell. He had missed only one day of school. He even attended after-school tutoring sessions.
He couldn`t read, he couldn`t print properly and he sometimes had problems expressing himself. But he enjoyed the books his teacher, Richard Meyer, would read out loud to him.
”He liked to read about monsters and giants, creatures bigger than the Earth,” Meyer said. ”He liked conquering-your-fears kinds of books.”
Sometimes, when children called him ”BD,” Dantrell cried.
He seemed more at ease and confident outside of class. ”I can beat you running, I can beat you dancing,” he would say, challenging playmates.
At Demicco`s youth drop-in center he became an expert pool player. It was there that he also became friends with Anthony Felton, a 9-year-old boxing prodigy. Anthony was fatally shot on a March afternoon as he played at Cabrini, the victim, police said, of gunfire sprayed randomly into a crowd of children by a 13-year-old gang member.
Not long afterward, Dantrell followed Anthony`s example and began boxing under the tutelage of Seals, a Chicago Park District coach at the nearby Seward fieldhouse.
In the gym, what Seals called Dantrell`s hyperactivity was a bonus. He never wanted to rest, forever asking to get back in the ring or to pummel the punching bag. In June, during a Park District tournament, he won a second-place trophy.
”He had a lot of heart,” Seals said.
Dantrell still was learning his boxing techniques, but he already knew how to send Seals and the young boxers into convulsions of laughter with a little joke or a silly gesture.
If his burns, still healing, made him self-conscious, it never showed. The adults who supervised him never recalled the other children making fun of him.
”A very attractive young man,” were the words Seals used to describe Dantrell.
Relatives said Dantrell looked like his father.
Kelvin Darnell Davis died Sept. 13 when he choked as a result of the drugs in his system, according to the Cook County medical examiner`s office. One drug was an opiate, the result of either heroin or morphine; the other was methadone, sometimes used by addicts trying to overcome a habit.
Davis, 27, the father of eight children in addition to Dantrell, was found on a bed in his mother`s West Side home before he was pronounced dead at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park. Davis had no permanent address or job.
Davis had several tattoos on his arms. Two of them incorporated dollar signs. One was a design with the words ”Love” and ”Mom” interlinked.
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Dantrell idolized his father. During a follow-up visit to Loyola, Dantrell told Supple his father had died. ”He seemed matter of fact. He just said it: `My daddy`s dead.` ” But as his mother talked about the death, Dantrell wept.
One month later, the tears were for Dantrell.
At the boy`s funeral Oct. 17, four days after Dantrell was shot while his mother walked him to school, Annette Freeman stood before an open casket that held her little boy dressed in a white tuxedo.
”He was the only one who loved me,” she screamed. ”He would always say, `I love you, Mama.` I love you too, Dantrell.”
He was buried next to his father.