PROJECT BREEDS DESPAIR

RED SPRINGS -- The killing occurred in the shadow of a housing project
where hopes and dreams cease to exist. Here, on Dec. 7, police say,
26-year-old Marcus Galbreath grabbed an SKS military-style rifle and
started shooting.

The reason: He wasn't chosen to play in a pick-up basketball game on a
court beside the Westgate Terrace housing project.

Galbreath has been charged with killing Jeffrey Fairley, who died trying to
flee the torrent of bullets.

Police Detective Chris Dammons called it another senseless killing in Red
Springs. A killing that happened outside a housing project where many
people think poverty and despair are their destiny.

"Ninety-nine percent of the people on public assistance have the attitude
that they are not going to make it out of here," Dammons said. He should
know. Dammons is a product of this project, a Westgate Terrace resident who
was able to overcome the odds.

Dammons knows these people, understands them and empathizes with their
struggles. This is a man who once held his own brother in his arms as he
lay dying of a gunshot wound.

Now Dammons spends part of his life trying to show others the way out. On a
recent day, he was working on Anthony Glover, the man police say Galbreath
was trying to shoot.

"I've got next up," Glover called out on that unseasonably warm December day.

For the most part, the same group of about a dozen young men had gathered
that afternoon, on a slab of concrete for a little four-on-four.

Galbreath became angry when the three men Glover chose for his team didn't
include him. He grabbed the basketball and started walking around with it.

"He got mad," Glover said. "'If I don't play, nobody is playing."'

The two argued awhile before Galbreath stomped off with his friends.

Glover thought that was the end of it. He started to play some more
basketball. He said he had no idea that Galbreath had gone off, at his
friends' urging, to get a gun. Police say he returned a few minutes later
with the rifle.

Glover said Galbreath approached the court, then fired seven quick shots
into the ground.

"I don't know what was wrong with him," Glover said. "He just flipped out,
I guess."

Everyone scattered, running for safety. Glover said he looked back to see
Fairley limping. Glover ran faster.

Police say Galbreath fired between 25 and 30 shots that day. One bullet hit
Fairley in the leg, striking an artery. Fairley ran to a nearby house,
collapsed inside and died.

Now, Galbreath sits in jail without bond, a far cry from his brief days of
glory.

In high school, Galbreath could run like the wind. He won two gold medals
and a bronze at the Special Olympics World Games in Connecticut in 1995. He
was part of a relay team from Red Springs that broke a Special Olympics
world record.

A low IQ is one criteria for Special Olympics, but officials wouldn't say
if that made Galbreath eligible.

At the spring games in 1996, members of the relay team wore electric blue
jogging suits as they carried the torch that began the competition. "It
made me feel real special to do that," Galbreath said at the time. "I'm
proud to have that experience, and I'd love to do it again."

But Galbreath never gave himself the chance. He was too busy committing crime.

By the time of the killing, Galbreath had faced 19 criminal charges in 26
years of life.

Two months before Fairley's death, Galbreath was charged with beating and
trying to choke Charles Foxworth, a polite, slender youth who lives near
Westgate Terrace and suffers from schizophrenia.

Foxworth's mother, Ella, said Galbreath got mad because her son put his
finger in Galbreath's face. But, she said, that didn't justify the beating,
which left scars on Charles' back.

Eva Patterson, Galbreath's track coach for Special Olympics, didn't know
about Galbreath's criminal behavior.

"He was a great kid, a great athlete," Patterson said. "He loved to have
fun. He was always somebody you wanted to be around."

In recent years, she said, Galbreath would drop in on her at school
sometimes. He would talk about wanting to go back to school, or to start a
family and get a job.

"He seemed to be goal oriented," Patterson said.

Now, his only goal may be trying to avoid death row, another casualty from
the Westgate Terrace housing project.

Then new year had just begun when Detective Chris Dammons and Staff Sgt.
Kaynnera Capers, a recruiter for the U.S. Marines, pulled into Westgate
Terrace. Dammons had asked the recruiter to try to talk Anthony Glover into
rejoining the Marines.

Glover left the Marine Corps in April, after a four-year stint. Until the
killing, he had gone to the basketball court almost every afternoon. There
just wasn't much else to do around Westgate Terrace.

He said he returned home to the project after leaving the Marines because
he wanted to be closer to his momma. He feels it's his duty to protect her.

But the killing has him thinking differently now. Maybe he'll go live with
his father in Maryland, he said before Dammons arrived with the recruiter.
Stay anywhere but here.

"This place is crazy," Glover said. "Everybody's sniffing cocaine. Nobody's
hardly talking to anybody no more."

To make matters worse, Glover can't find a job. At least not one that pays
more than $6 an hour.

"What's the use in that?" he said.

The good jobs are all but gone. U.S. trade agreements forced three of the
town's four textile mills to close. The Converse shoe factory folded last
year. Unemployment throughout Robeson County has soared.

Without a job, Glover tends to sleep a lot. One day, he put his clothes on
only after repeated knocks on the front door. It was about 11 a.m.

When Dammons and the Marine recruiter visited him on Jan. 2, Glover again
took his time getting to the front door. A small crowd began to gather outside.

It seems that everyone here knows and likes Dammons. He said he is in the
project every day. His grandmother still lives here. He likes to play
basketball with the children. He likes to offer advice and encouragement.

Dammons is a big man with an even bigger smile. He looks a lot like Magic
Johnson.

When Glover finally emerged from the front door, Dammons quickly told him
what he wanted. Rejoin the Marines. Get your brother to go in with you.

Glover said he would love to, but there is a small hitch. As a Marine, he
failed a random drug test. He got thrown into the brig and was demoted from
corporal to private.

Glover tells Dammons, a former Marine himself, that he left with an
honorable discharge. Dammons replies that he might be able to help him
re-enlist.

But later, Capers, the Marine recruiter, said Glover left the Marines with
a general discharge. The Marines won't take him back.

"We won't be able to do anything for that young man," Capers said.

For now, at least, Glover will remain stay in Westgate Terrace.

The front of Westgate Terrace lies off Buie Street, but it's hard to
distinguish the front from the back. The weather-beaten sign marking the
project's entrance is hard to read.

The Mill Village neighborhood lies behind the complex. Here, some nicely
kept homes wage a losing battle with their dilapidated neighbors.

Police Chief Lum Edwards, who grew up in Mill Village, said the
neighborhood is heading in the wrong direction. It is heading in the way of
Westgate Terrace.

At 9:30 on a recent morning, it was too early for much activity at
Westgate. The real activity comes after dark, Dammons said, when people who
don't live in the complex come by to cause trouble.

At this hour, three children were just leaving their home, two carrying
basketballs.

Dammons said it's probably safe to be in Westgate at this hour. But not
necessarily.

"They get you in a corner over there and they will hem you up," he said.
"They are tough kids. It's their way of survival."

After dark, Dammons said, forget it. You don't want to be in Westgate
Terrace after sunset.

Dammons lived here until age 16, right across the way from where Glover
lives now. He remembers the day his apartment building caught fire. How it
smelled like smoke for weeks afterward.

He remembers committing his first crime, at the age of 10, when he stole a
motorcycle.

Dammons said he did it because he wanted something he knew he could never
get any other way.

And then he did something almost as bad. He tried to lie his way out.

When his mother learned the truth, Dammons said, she blistered his young
behind. She made him go to work as a stock boy at Roscoe's.

People in the community came to talk to him, coaches, teachers and lawmen,
mostly. People like Edwards, who's now the police chief.

They saw promise in Dammons. He was a gifted baseball player. They didn't
want to see him wind up like so many others from Westgate Terrace.

Dammons credits these people and baseball with pulling him out of the
project. He went on to play baseball at UNC-Charlotte. But even then, he
said, he didn't have the discipline necessary to truly succeed in college
or on the baseball field.

He did not wise up, he said, until he joined the Marines.

Four years later, he returned home a new man. A man intent on helping young
people find the right path. A path Dammons staggered and sometimes stumbled
down himself.

But even then, Dammons couldn't save a Westgate Terrace man he had known
well: His younger brother, Anthony Ellis.

Try as they might, Dammons and his mother couldn't keep Ellis away from
drugs. Left with no alternative, Dammons said, he arrested his brother, who
went to jail. Dammons said he thought it was the only way he could turn him
around.

Ellis stayed in jail between 35 and 45 days. When he got out, Dammons said,
it appeared that he might turn himself around.

But on the night of Aug. 2, 1996, Ellis went to a friend's house to return
a pair of clippers. He got shot in the chest in the front yard. Ellis was 18.

"One night. Forty-five minutes. That's all it took," Dammons said. Another
casualty of Westgate Terrace.

Dammons was the first officer to respond. He took over CPR from a medic,
not bothering to look at the injured man's face. When he finally did,
Dammons, said, he put his brother in the back of his patrol car.

"I was not going to give them the satisfaction of watching him die here on
the ground like an animal," Dammons said.

Ellis' killer pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to
between 24 and 38 months in prison. He was also ordered to enter a
drug-rehabilitation program.

His brother's death gave Dammons another reason to fight for the people of
Westgate Terrace.

It is another reason he goes there, day in and day out, to play basketball
and to counsel the kids.

Children, Dammons believes, are what law enforcement is largely about.
Catch them while they are young.

"Kids are our future," he said. "For me, as a law enforcement officer,
we've got to start educating our parents."

Dammons said that's more important now than ever. Unemployment is taking a
toll on Red Springs and the rest of Robeson County.

Crime in Red Springs is increasing, Dammons said, and statistics bear that
out. Crime increased 27 percent from 1995 through 1999 in Red Springs and
25 percent across Robeson County.

"I hate to say it. but it's going to get worse before it gets better,"
Dammons said. "The actual forms of crimes are going to get more violent.

"They are going to branch out so their families can eat. That's basically
what this is. It's going to come down to survival."

Although Westgate Terrace has seen its share of tragedy, some are quick to
defend it. For the most part, they say, its residents are good people, just
down on their luck.

Others, including Betty Deese, say Westgate is a lot better now than it
once was.

Deese has managed Westgate for the Robeson County Housing Authority for 10
years. When she started, Deese said, she would never venture into the
complex at night. It was so bad back then, she said, her office had bars on
the windows.

Back then, like now, the problems were largely caused by outsiders, Deese
and Dammons said.

Now, Deese said, she feels secure enough to go into the project to quell a
problem at 3 a.m.

One reason for the turn-around is a three-year-old grant program that
allowed the complex to hire two off-duty lawmen to patrol at night, Deese said.

Another reason, she said, is that the complex began enforcing no-loitering
laws. Now, people who aren't supposed to be at Westgate Terrace are charged
with trespassing.

People like Marcus Galbreath. Galbreath, who once lived at Westgate, was
banned from the property for fighting, Deese said. He was charged at least
twice with trespassing.

But Deese was powerless to prevent Galbreath from going on the basketball
court, which lies no more than 20 yards from the complex. The court belongs
to the town of Red Springs.

"If it were mine, I'd have had it fenced in -- or take the goals down,"
Deese said.

Instead, a casualty of the Westgate Terrace housing project stands charged
with murder. Police say he grabbed a gun and just started shooting.

The reason: he didn't get picked to play.