TRAGEDY DIDN'T WAKE UP TROUBLED STORE OWNER

The shop that neighbors call "the blue store" has seen more than its
share of heartbreak and trouble. A shrine to a dead 15-year-old boy
right inside the front door is evidence of that.

Its real name, Hopkins One Stop, bears a darkly humorous irony now.
You get your bread, your milk, your marijuana, all at one convenient location.

Vice squad police raided the store at 4703 N. Hopkins St. this week
and arrested owner Aubrey Hubanks and a clerk. And the city now is in
a full-court press to declare the place a nuisance.

People have been complaining to the cops about the store. "They said
there was drug-dealing over the meat counter," Lt. Robert Stelter
said. An undercover officer bought pot at the store and it was indeed
over the meat counter, he said.

Other marijuana, packaged in small plastic bags for quick sale, was
seized from the store and an apartment upstairs.

Trouble has returned.

This is the same store where last March, Hubanks' two sons got hold
of a .45-caliber handgun kept behind the counter. While trying to
unload the gun, the 13-year-old son shot his 15-year-old brother,
Aubrey Jr., in the neck. The boy died.

"We miss you now, our hearts are sore," says a poem that hangs on a
piece of cardboard here alongside photos of the smiling boy.

The gun wasn't supposed to be there because the boys' father is a
convicted felon in a 1983 armed burglary case. Neither were the 56
bags of marijuana priced at $10 to $20 each, all tucked into a cigar
box behind the counter, according to a criminal complaint.

In the midst of his grief over the loss of a son, Aubrey Hubanks was
charged with two felonies. That case is still winding through the courts.

You'd think this would have been a huge wake-up call for him. This
week's drug raid suggests otherwise. Even the city garbage can on the
sidewalk outside seems to mock him with its stenciled message that
"Drugs are trash."

I tried without success to interview Hubanks or his wife. I can tell
you that when he was busted the first time, he told police he sells
pot to pay medical bills. He wasn't peddling cocaine and so he did
not consider himself a drug dealer, the criminal complaint says.

That's something, I suppose, but it's a felony either way. And
selling out of your business - man, that's risky.

As I said, this time the city and the police have teamed up to hammer
the blue store as a nuisance. Five television news photographers
crowded in as a city inspector slapped a notice on the building this
week, calling it "unfit for human habitation." Photos purporting to
show rotten food, bad wiring and other code violations were handed
out to reporters.

A criminal complaint is expected to be signed today charging Hubanks
with felony bail jumping and drug possession. The clerk faces a
drug-dealing charge; he's accused of selling the pot to the officer.

Hubanks' lawyer, Bridget Boyle, said the boy's death was "the saddest
thing ever," but she cautioned me about blaming it on drug activity
at the store. Many shop owners and tavern-keepers in the city keep a
gun for protection, she said.

The younger brother was charged as a juvenile, but the case was
dropped, to be handled informally by the probation department. The
real punishment for his act is the agony that began the instant the
gun went off.

"I hope the father learns a lesson from this," Children's Court Judge
Mary Triggiano said as she dismissed charges against the boy in May.

Hubanks was in the courtroom when she said it. Right now, he's
sitting in jail, probably wishing the lesson had sunk in a little better.