Series: Day Three - Article Two

NEIGHBORHOOD WAS NEXUS OF USER'S LIFE, DEATH

Lionel Pooler II, known as Butch to those who cared about him, was left
face down on the rotting floorboards of an abandoned house in Central City.

His blood had pooled next to a crack pipe, a loaded 9 mm magazine, an empty
bottle of cheap wine and a sleeping bag. He had stayed for some time in the
house on Philip Street, not far from the corner of Loyola Avenue, where he
was raised and his family once ran a store.

His mother died of cancer when he was 14 and, at 24, a dishonorable
discharge ended a six-year hitch in the Army. His sister, Zonthia Thornton,
thinks the discharge was because of marijuana, though she's not sure Pooler
ever told her the whole story.

He worked as a sheriff's deputy for a few years and tried to have a regular
life, Thornton said, but it didn't work out. Neither did his marriage to a
woman named Michelle, though when she had children with another man, she
gave them Pooler's last name.

For the better part of the past 15 years, Pooler fell into the wayward life
of a crackhead, working odd jobs and sleeping wherever he could lay his
head. Sometimes he stayed in a local church; at one point he lived out of a
car.

"He didn't have to," Thornton said. Relatives offered Pooler places to
stay, but pride wouldn't let him, she said.

"I'm the oldest, I'm supposed to be helping you," he would tell his
siblings -- four brothers, two sisters -- when they offered money or clothing.

Still, he kept in touch, walking miles to visit family after they moved
away from Central City, leaving him behind. He had kept his Army boots.
"They must have had good soles," said Thornton, seated inside her tidy,
bright Carrollton home, as her 2-year-old son Corey bounded about.

Even though Pooler had separated from his wife almost 20 years before,
Michelle would look him up in Central City from time to time, with the
children in tow. "This is my beautiful wife and my beautiful children,"
he'd say to his street corner buddies.

Sometimes he'd join the knot of men at Claiborne and Jefferson avenues,
waiting for truck drivers to pull up with offers of a few bucks to help
them unload their cargo. But such bursts of industriousness were short-lived.

"When you looked up, he'd be back in Central City," Thornton said.

Like many cases involving the death of drug addicts, Pooler's murder
remains unsolved. He had bummed a cigarette from a neighborhood regular
before heading into the alleyway of the boarded-up shotgun.

The last time Thornton saw her brother was July 12. He rang her doorbell,
accompanied by a woman with whom he'd been staying.

He asked for food, and Thornton bagged some canned goods and drinks.

Pooler had blood on his shirt and a bruise on his face. His clothes were
unkempt, and he appeared dirty. "He just looked pretty tore up," Thornton
recalled.

But Pooler said he was fine. "Nobody can't kill bad grass," he said, using
a favorite adage to allay his sister's concerns.

A single gunshot to the face ended his life two weeks later.

Thornton was washing her hair when the call came. At the funeral, she
learned things she had never known about her brother.

One woman from a nearby nursing home cried and cried. Pooler had done
errands for her and several other residents, and then turned down the money
they offered. "If you cook something, let me know," he'd say with a smile.

After the service, young men approached Thornton, asking for some of the
funeral wreaths. They wanted to put them on the porch of the Philip Street
house where Pooler had been murdered.