Chuck Turner thought he knew what he was getting into when he moved from Southern California five years ago to start a branch of Victory Outreach Church in the nation’s capital.
With his family in tow, the Rev. Turner moved to some of the city’s meanest streets, where Benning Road runs into East Capital Street. You’ll know it by the Shrimp Boat carryout on the corner and the sirens in your ear.
His son, Devon, became fast friends with a neighbor, Arthur Daniels Jr. They were classmates at Elliot Junior High. Arthur idolized Devon: When Devon took up the drums, Arthur learned to play percussion; when Devon went out for the basketball team, Arthur signed up, too.
“They were like two peas in a pod,” Turner tells me. “Arthur was at my house all the time.”
Arthur joined the youth group at Victory Outreach. He tried to get his mother and father to join, too. “In the testimony service,” Turners says, “he always jumped up and had something to say.”
Arthur and Devon, both 14, were walking home in a group from a church meeting the last Saturday night in February when two youngmen asked where they were from. The boys clammed up. One of the men pulled a pistol. Devon and Arthur fled. Devon heard two shots.
When Devon and the boys reached safety, they realized Arthur was no longer with them. They returned. They saw cops and sirens — and Arthur lying on the ground.
Devon called his dad and said, “They shot Arthur.”
Days later, police arrested Ransom Perry Jr. and charged him with killing Arthur. As I have written in a series of columns, police had arrested Perry on numerous occasions. Once for carrying a pistol. Once for threatening his father. Prosecutors and judges let him loose.
I ran into Rev. Turner yesterday in the District Building. Accompanied by Paul Craney with the D.C. Republican Party, he was visiting council members to see if they could help him get an “invitation” to testify before Judiciary Chairman Phil Mendelson’s hearing on the omnibus crime bill. Mendelson has closed his hearing on May 18 to invited guests.
“It’s an opportunity to ensure Arthur’s death was not in vain,” he says. “I don’t want him to be just another kid shot.”
Turner wants to tell the council to pass Mayor Adrian Fenty’s crime bill, which stiffens penalties for gun crimes and illegal gun possession. So far, Mendelson seems in no hurry to move the bill; Ward 2 member Jack Evans plans to move the tougher guns and gangs sections in emergency legislation before the full council, if necessary.
“We need to put these new laws in place this summer,” Evans says.
Says police union chief Kris Baumann: “The council needs to make sure our citizens living in kill zones are better protected.”
Citizens — and kids like Arthur Daniels.
Rev. Turner’s testimony says: “Arthur’s life was taken because a violent criminal was allowed back onto our streets and neighborhoods.” Amen.
