TRAGEDY, MERCY

Justice won't be fully served in a Wake County teenager's drug death
until the youth held responsible receives treatment

Righteous anger is an understandable response to negligence when it
cuts short the life of a child -- even when the negligent party is a
child as well. Those were the sad circumstances leading to the death
last year of Erica Hicks, a promising junior at Southeast Raleigh
High School. Hicks, of Garner, took a mixture of illegal drugs given
to her by a friend who attended Cary High School. She collapsed and
later was declared brain dead, a senseless loss if ever there was one.

Prosecutors had wanted the drug supplier, 16, to be tried as an adult
for second-degree murder. But a Wake District Court judge wisely
tempered justice with mercy and kept the case, the county's first
murder prosecution of a drug supplier, in juvenile court. For that
reason, the boy was tried behind closed doors and his identity
protected. He was found not guilty of the murder charge but convicted
of involuntary manslaughter.

Under the sentence imposed Tuesday by Judge Craig Croom, the youth's
seven months in a juvenile detention center will count for most, but
not all, of his sentence behind bars. Appropriately, he will serve
four more days in jail this fall to mark the anniversary of Hicks'
death. He also will be sent temporarily to his father's home wearing
an electronic monitor. Then he will have to undergo substance-abuse
treatment and counseling. He'll be subject to random drug tests and
warrantless searches.

The sentence sounds like justice for the Hicks family. But the youth
unfortunately must await an opening in a residential treatment center
for drug abusers. It's a sign of North Carolina's persistent shortage
of drug abuse treatment.

If all families were to take a stand against drug experimentation by
their kids, the state likely would find treatment options woefully
inadequate to the need. Any such stand was hard to discern in Hicks'
case. In fact, the parents of both teenagers took a tongue-lashing
from the judge for their casual approach to marijuana use.

The father of the convicted youth even had to be ordered to sign
releases for his son to receive mental health services. A treatment
center shapes up as a healthier environment than this home, or a
state training school for that matter, because therapy helps most
people shake their addictions and stay clean. Yet the boy is expected
to wait three or four months for a treatment center opening, and
that's not acceptable.

The public's interest in adequate drug treatment lies in safety from
the crimes that tend to follow users, but neither can this state
afford wasted lives. Because Erica Hicks' life was cut short, the
community has lost whatever she could have become, and the
possibilities were abundant. To lose her young friend's contribution,
too, would compound the tragedy.

The hope is that probation authorities can minimize his wait for
treatment. Beyond that, state leaders must find more money to make
room for addicts who recognize their need for healing.