LEGACY OF DEMARCUS HANSON

Seeking Purpose In Son's Death Dad Wrestles With Guilt; Mom Lives Daily
With Tragedy

James TaVell King grew up to be what he saw every day just beyond the doors
of his mom's apartment in the Jane Addams housing project in Rockford: a
drug dealer.

The 27-year-old former Gangster Disciple was locked up in a southern
Illinois prison when gang members shot up a house on Chestnut Street last
April and killed his 8-year-old son, DeMarcus Hanson.

The child was asleep at the home of his great-grandmother, Estella Dowthard.

Now King struggles with the knowledge that he was part of a violent street
culture that led to his son's death.

DeMarcus' mother, Rita Hanson, lives one day at a time to cope with a life
altered forever by a string of tragedies. She is 25.

Rita has avoided media attention since her son's death but talked recently
about her life and her dreams for DeMarcus. She hopes her story helps
people understand the devastation caused by drugs, gangs and easy access to
guns.

James agreed to be interviewed in prison. He talked about how he ended up
behind bars almost 350 miles from home. He wants his son's death to shine a
light on a street culture that nurtures violence. T ragedy has marked the
couple's relationship. James was between prison terms in September 1998
when their 3-year-old daughter, TyShonna, was killed. Rita was picking up
the child at a baby sitter's house when the little girl rushed to the car
ahead of her mother. The car rolled down the driveway, knocked the child
down and killed her.

Rita's mother died of a drug overdose in Rockford in April 2001. She
doesn't like to talk about her upbringing. She and her sister, 20-year-old
Jasmine Hanson, are grateful to an aunt who helped raise them.

James was not in Rockford to comfort Hanson at her mother's death or
DeMarcus' murder. He had been returned to prison in 1999 on an 11-year
sentence for selling drugs to undercover officers.

After being returned to prison, James' contribution to raising DeMarcus
amounted to suggestions delivered during collect calls from the cellblock.

"We never whupped our kids," James said. "I'd tell Rita, if he did
something wrong, sit him down and point out what he did wrong and show him
why it's wrong. Show him the consequences.

"I told him: 'Your daddy did some bad things, and it caught up with me. Now
I'm paying the price.' "

Back then, Rita worked long hours as a certified nursing assistant at
Milestone Inc., a residential facility for developmentally disabled adults.

She dreamed of going to college, being successful, showing DeMarcus the
value of hard work.

"When I was working all those hours, Granny kept DeMarcus, and I didn't
have to worry about his safety," she said. "Who would have ever imagined this?"

Rock Over A Prison Wall

Even from a distance, guard towers give away the purpose of the sprawling
white concrete block complex on U.S. 50 near Sumner, about 10 miles east of
Olney. Visitors spot the towers well before they see the sign for Lawrence
Correctional Center or notice the 8-foot-high chain-link fence that rings
the prison.

Row after row of barbed wire with loops of razor wire coiled above it
stretch across the fence top. The medium-security prison, which opened in
November 2001, is home to 850 men. James' "job" back home in Rockford put
him inside those walls.

Apart from short-term jobs at Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant and in the
Rockford Register Star's distribution center, an honest resume would show
that drug dealing dominated his work life between the ages of 15 and 23.

One reason he agreed to be interviewed, he said, was to send a message to
young people that they won't hear on the streets.

"Every time you sell a bag or every time you carry a pistol, you're
throwing a rock at the penitentiary, and the rock has got a chain on it,
and that chain is hooked to your ankle," he said. "So, when you throw it
over that wall, you're going over with it."

King has seen the inside of five state prisons during two terms, and prison
gyms have made solid the 185 pounds he carries on a 5-foot-9 frame. Time
behind bars gave him the opportunity to earn a GED and take enough college
classes to be within 16 credit hours of an associate's degree in computer
sciences.

In person, he doesn't seem dangerous, yet he admits he carried guns and was
prepared to do what he had to do on the streets.

He talks of traditional moral values, yet as he elaborates on them from his
experience, they emerge as if filtered through a cockeyed prism.

He sold hard drugs, but he never used them. He saw that cocaine made people
do crazy things. He said he was a gang member back when gangs meant
something. In his days on the streets, the Gangster Disciples' motto was to
grow and develop. There was a code of ethics, too.

He was recruited into the drug trade by the age of 15 but said he refused
to lure in "shorties" when he got to be a full-fledged dealer.

Seducing 'Shorty'

James paints an almost idyllic picture of growing up in a public housing
development.

"We never left Jane Addams. We had a lot of fun. The doughnut shop and the
currency exchange were across the street. The milkman used to come through
and give us free milk. We were footloose and fancy free."

The picture is less attractive when James sketches in the drug dealers
against the backdrop of poverty. The ever present pushers had everything
these unfettered, low-income kids wanted: money, fancy cars, flashy
clothes, gold jewelry, women.

"We might be playing and we'd see them over there in their group kicking it
among themselves, and we'd think, 'We're going to be like them someday,' "
James said.

"Eventually, as you get older, they take a liking to you and take you under
their wing, and then you're hanging around with the big guys."

One of the big guys might tuck $40 or $50 into the pocket of a "shorty" and
win his loyalty. At 15 or 16, James started selling drugs at East High
School, where he was a student. He liked the money a lot.

"Just like the person who is addicted to drugs, the person who sells having
taken classes in prison. But his main goal is to be a better father to his
two surviving children, one DeMarcus' age and another a year older. He had
a relationship with their mother before Rita.

Rita doesn't think she wants to have any more children. Parenthood contains
too much potential for heartache. Nor does she know whether she wants to
stay in Rockford.

"I guess I'm running from something I shouldn't be running from, but it's
hard here," she said.