Series: Day Three - Article One

WEB OF ADDICTION

Addicts Desperate For A Fix Rub Elbows With Death Daily, Entering Dangerous
Areas And Risking Dealers' Wrath

Death accorded Terry Faulkner little dignity. According to police, the
father of two daughters died July 21 with a bullet in the back of his head
and a glass crack pipe tucked in his hand.

They found him by a curb in the insular Hollygrove neighborhood of New
Orleans, where he was born and raised: dead at 42. Crack cocaine played a
definitive role in Faulkner's death, just as it had in his life, a life
marked by arrests for possession and stints in jail and rehab.

Cocaine was in his blood when he died, according to the coroner. And
cocaine -- the theft of a local dealer's stash of crack -- directly
precipitated his execution.

"He got killed for a small amount of cocaine," said Capt. James Scott,
commander of the 3rd District and a 30-year veteran of the New Orleans
Police Department. "On the street, they cannot be in the business and allow
someone to rip them off. He was a user. Once you make that decision, that's
your life."

Police estimate three of four homicides in the city are linked to drugs.
The numbers don't distinguish between dealers' fights over turf and the
deaths of customers demanding their fix. But cops well know that the
marketplace each year claims dozens of people like Terry Faulkner: drug
users with no history of violence or organized dealing.

In 2003, four out of 10 of the city's murder victims tested positive for
illegal drugs, according to the coroner's office. Cocaine was the most
prevalent, far outpacing all other illegal drugs combined. In fact, more
murder victims had cocaine in their systems than alcohol.

Faulkner was among the 30 percent who tested positive for cocaine. So was
Lionel Pooler, 45, who was murdered in an abandoned house in Central City.
And Latasha Adams, 25, shot dead in Algiers. And April Savoy Scheidel, 31,
shot in the back in the Lower 9th Ward.

"If they buy or sell drugs, they're susceptible to being killed," said Dr.
Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish coroner since 1974. "This is the life a lot
of people lead in this city."

Life Of Desperation

Crackhead.

It's the street's harshest designation. No matter that crack has lured
well-educated professionals and once comfortable housewives into addiction.
To be a crackhead is to be the street's ultimate loser, addicted to a
cheap, nasty narcotic that denies users even the spasm of giddy glamour
available from a snort of powdered cocaine, or the wistful moment of
melancholy that distracts the heroin addict from his or her daily ordeal.
Crack use is, from start to finish, an act of desperation.

Strangers enter neighborhoods where their only business is the hunt. They
see the graffiti or the abandoned house and look for the person on the
street corner to signal that their hunch is correct.

For most detectives, murdered addicts are not innocent victims. They say
they've heard the drug users' lies too many times, seen their thievery and
conniving and the gunplay it breeds.

Many such murders remain unsolved, in part because they don't leave a wake
of clues that lead in any one direction. And few witnesses want to risk
retribution in such cases.

But as often as not, cops probing a user's death need look no further than
the street-level dealer. There's an irony, of course, in dealers being
prime suspects in the deaths of their customers. In the short term, murder
isn't good for business.

"They want you to come back," said Sgt. Mark Mornay, a 3rd District
officer. "But touch their stash and they find out about it. . . . If you
rip them off, that's the problem."

Letting drug users get away with stealing is like a merchant allowing
customers to shoplift, he said. "It's bad enough you have to hide it from
the police," Mornay said. "You can't conduct a business. It just results in
homicides on occasion. They've got one or two choices: Get out of the game
or address the problem."

Uncovering Crack Ring

Faulkner, police say, became a problem.

Danice Faulkner-Edwards, who has an administrative job in New Orleans, said
her brother's murder was an eye-opener for the family.

They learned, for instance, that police had identified a loosely organized
gang that was dealing crack in the neighborhood. Calling themselves the New
Jacks, the young men were armed and bold. They kicked in the doors of a
vacant house in the 3900 block of Hollygrove Street and claimed it as a
headquarters. The leader, a 16-year-old, told residents, "No one will live
in peace as long as I'm here."

People came in cars and cabs for the gang's $20 chunks of crack. Or they'd
smoke in the house, said the property owner who kept returning to the
corner to chase away the young dealers.

A three-month undercover investigation led to a pre-dawn raid Nov. 6, in
which a dozen young men were arrested in connection with an open air crack
market on the corner of Hollygrove and Peach streets.

Jonathan Lawrence, the teen who police say ran the Hollygrove ring, pleaded
guilty days later to dealing crack. He awaits sentencing. Two weeks ago, he
was booked with murder in Faulkner's death.

At the time of the sweep, however, Faulkner's 76-year-old father wasn't
optimistic that his son's killer would be found.

"Those are the kind that don't get solved," William Faulkner said, settling
back in an armchair in the living room of the shotgun double he bought in 1963.

The elder Faulkner worked in the maritime industry in New Orleans for 43
years and with his wife raised five children in Hollygrove. They all went
to church every Sunday, he said.

"The only way they get solved is if they catch them doing something else,"
he said. "When they know it's a dope thing, they forget about you. That I
know."

Nowhere To Run

Family members believe Faulkner was gunned down by mistake. Another man,
who is Faulkner's age, owed money to a teenager and lied that Faulkner had
the cash, they said.

They say the claim by police that Faulkner went down with a crack pipe in
his hand is a lie.

"I was the first one down there and looked at him," said Faulkner's father,
who heard the gunshots from his front porch that night.

But Faulkner-Edwards does not deny her brother had fallen prey to the drug.
"I wasn't sure how to help him. We all have our vices, but that was one I
didn't understand. He was a Christian. We didn't understand how it
controlled him so."

In the early 1990s, Terry Faulkner tried to make a fresh start. Danice
Faulkner-Edwards was living in Cincinnati, where she had graduated from
college and started a family and a career in library administration.

Her brother had asked whether he could stay with her for a while.

She welcomed him, but with a caveat: "Don't run from it because it's here,"
she said of the drugs. "You can come up here, but you can get it on the
corner. I didn't want him running from anything. He was clean most of that
time."

Back in New Orleans, though, Faulkner returned to his habit. In 1997, he
was arrested for having a piece of crack cocaine and a pipe on a Hollygrove
street corner.

A year later, he was arrested again for crack possession. He pleaded
guilty, and the judge sentenced him to probation. But he never reported to
the officer, records in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court show. The
judge ordered him into a drug rehab program.

The real test for addicts, his sister said, seems to be money earned from a
regular job. If they are making money and still resisting the drug, they
might make it, she said. But most often, the money is quickly traded for
another high. "When they get the money -- nice money -- then they tend to
fall," she said.

Shortly before his death, Faulkner had gotten a job on a construction site
in Hollygrove, reunited with a woman he knew from his youth and, at her
urging, was attending Bible study. He had renewed contact with his
daughters, ages 16 and 21.

Almost everyone in Hollygrove seemed to know him. Faulkner spent a lot of
time in the neighborhood helping older people. He'd cut grass, do
housecleaning for them. He was the one who returned garbage cans to their
proper places after the sanitation trucks passed by on trash day.

"He didn't mind hard work," Faulkner-Edwards said. "It was just getting him
there."

Circle Completes Itself

At Faulkner's funeral, a week after his murder, more than 100 people filled
the Union Bethel AME Church in Central City. It was a joyful, candid
service. Rousing hymns filled the church with warmth. Flowers surrounded
Faulkner's casket. A white limousine waited outside.

Family, neighbors and ministers remembered Faulkner as a gentle soul who
worked with his hands and was adored by his daughters.

He was home now, they repeated. Dignity returned to him, as he lay in a
casket, dressed for church.

"Terry was God's child," the Rev. Thomas Brown Jr. told the congregation,
drawing cheers. "He may have strayed, but so have you."

Faulkner's youngest daughter composed a poem for the funeral. "At times you
would make us mad and we would try to let go," she wrote. "But it seemed
like every time we try, we loved you even more."

Faulkner died outside the schoolyard of his old elementary school. That
night, a crowd of young people lined up to watch police at the scene. His
youngest daughter was among them, crying uncontrollably, unable to speak.
Faulkner-Edwards, however, stayed home.

"I never thought our family would experience that, the fact that he died so
violently and in our neighborhood," she said. "I thought he might end his
life through drugs, but not through a violent act. And that hurt, that
really, truly hurt. He had a circle in life. He died on the street that he
lived on. I don't know why it happened that way."