This was also during the time of the Crack Cocaine epidemic; you could find crack on any corner in the Southwest Detroit area and Ecorse. And at high school we had a lot of gang members and dealers, at some point I became a target for one of the gangs as an easy mark. I always had my cash on me because I didn’t want to leave it at home, and at some point, someone seen me with it at school. One day as I was walking into the school building, there were 3 kids standing by the eastside doors I always came in, and as I opened the door 3 more kids were there. I was grabbed and picked up and slammed on the floor, kicked a few times and my pockets gone through, my cash was taken. One of the kids pulled out a gun and pointed at me and told me not to say anything. I just nodded my head, they went out the doors, I looked down the hallway and saw a school staff member watching me, he didn’t do anything to stop this robbery or even come to my aid after they left, he just walked away. I was so angry; I got up and walked out of the school. I skipped school that day, the next day was a Saturday, I told one of my chop shop buddies about it, and I decided to burn the school down.
On Sunday morning, my buddy and I broke into the school, we ran around the school and got into some stuff, and made our way into the science classroom, we found all the flammable stuff we could find in the classroom, and I put a match to it. It went up fast, we took off running back to the classroom we came in through. We jumped out the window and ran towards the railroad tracks. He took off and I stayed on the tracks and watched from behind some bushes, not even 10 minutes later I heard the fire engines start up. The fire department put the fire out. It turned out that the principle was driving down the street next to the school on his way to church, and saw the smoke coming from the school, he drove over to the fire department 3 blocks away and told them. The fire destroyed 3 classrooms and the hallway area. I was still not happy with the result or the outcome. I didn’t go to school on Monday, I played sick at home, my mom called the school and got me an excused absence.
I went back to school for the rest of the week, I was making a plan, and watching the guys who robbed me, I knew that they always came into the same doors I used to come in, and they always went out the same doors after school. One of the kids I knew where is corner was, one night I grabbed my brass knuckles and slipped out my window and I found him on his corner, I walked up to him with my hoodie down and sucker punched him with the brass knuckles, he went down, his boy on the other corner yelled and started running at me. I took off running, I lost him on the tracks, it was close, he was basically right on top of me when he walked away.
I’ve mentioned the tracks a few times, so I should give you the reader a better visual of them. The tracks in Ecorse are or were railroad tracks that ran through the whole city, from north to south, right in the middle of the city. You had 2 major roads that went under the tracks (Viaducts) and one that went over the tracks into southwest Detroit. So Outer Drive was on the south side of the high school and it had a viaduct, Salliotte road was on the north side of the high school which was also the city line for Southwest Detroit. There were 4 sets of active tracks and 1 set of inactive tracks. Where each set of tracks crossed over Outer Drive Road, there was a space that you could climb down to get to the support beams that supported the tracks above. We would get down there and smoke and just hang out and watch people as they drove by. It was just a hang out or a place to hide. These tracks were also important because I could jump on a train and ride down to Wyandotte and jump off at a friend’s house in the morning, and jump back on the 7:30 pm train and get back into my home area.
After I realize how close I came to being caught after I sucker punched the one kid, I decided to even the playing field, I wasn’t sure who had guns and who didn’t, a few weeks after the fire, I played sick again on a Monday morning, my mom and step dad went to work, I stayed home, I knew my neighbor was going someplace that day, because during the weekend I heard her talking to her daughter about leaving Monday morning. I was doing some snow removal work for her, as she was elderly, she had a rifle with a scope on it in her bedroom. I saw her and her daughter get into their car and leave, I went out my front door and walked around the block, her house was considered an ally house because it sat so far back in the lot, I went to her back door and it was locked, I went to her bathroom window, which I had left unlocked the day before, I slide the window up and climbed through. I walked into her bedroom and grabbed the Rifle; I wrapped it in a towel and went out the locked door. I jumped the fence into my own yard and went into my house by the back door. The Rifle was longer than I expected, I had to find a way to conceal it while I made my way over to the high school. I grabbed my stepdad’s long army green coat. I wrapped a few bandanas around the barrel of the rifle. It had a strap, I put it over my shoulder, put the jacket on and walked, it was no more than a half mile to the tracks next to the school.
When I got to the tracks and the viaduct, I took the rifle down into the hole and sat for a while, at some point I came up from the viaduct and found a perch to set up on, my plan at this point was to wait till school was let out, and I was going to shoot as many of the kids that robbed me as I could. I heard the school bell go off for lunch, I climbed back down into the viaducts, with the rifle. I knew that after the bell for lunch over there were 3 more pairs of bells till school was let out. I was sitting down there smoking when I heard rocks move on the tracks above, I just sat there as quite a possible, after about 10 minutes I didn’t hear anymore movement above me, I decided to climb up and take a look out of the hole I was in.
I popped my head up out of the hole and immediately was confronted at gun point by an
Ecorse police officer, he told me to raise my hands slowly and asked me about the rifle, I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was still in the hole, only half of my upper body was out of the hole. He told me that he knew I had my neighbors’ rifle, and that if I didn’t give it to him I wasn’t going to the police station, I was going to the hospital. I told him it was down the in the viaducts, he told me to get it and bring it out, butt first. If he saw the barrel, he would shoot me. I reached down and grabbed the gun, and handed it up to him, he gave it to his partner, he got my out of the viaducts hole and put me in hand cuffs, walked me across the tracks to his car. Once in the back of the car I asked him how he knew I was there. He told me that they had been looking for me to breaking into my neighbor’s house, my foot prints in the snow had lead them to my back door. And that they got a call from a concerned citizen about someone on the tracks with what looked like a rifle. I was taken to the police station and questioned, I admitted to breaking into my neighbor’s house, I did not mention the reason I was on the tracks with a rifle, I didn’t tell them that I started the fire at the high school. My mom was called, and she came to the police station, and as soon she saw me she started whipping my ass. It took 2 officers to pull her off me. I was booked on a charge of Breaking & Entering, I was transported to the Wayne County Juvenile Detention center once again.
It was November 1985, I had just turned 15 years old, 3 more years till I was an adult and out of the juvenile system. Case worker John was still my case worker, I didn’t tell him anything more than what I admitted to with the police. He did tell me that I was going to be placed in a higher security placement with no free movement, but we had to go through the court process, which would take months. I was placed on the 3rd floor, in a room all the way at the end of the hallway. This room placement was sort of a blessing and a curse, it was a blessing as it was the farthest from the officer’s desk, which meant he was unable to hear what was going on inside the room, not to mention most of the night officers had the dayroom tv on and watched tv at night, from their desk. I had it in my mind that I was going to escape from the Detention center.
In order to escape from the Detention Center, I needed to have something that could cut the heavy metal screen, that was the biggest hurdle to overcome. I had heard of kids using an switch cover or an outlet cover, they were metal with pointed corners, the only problem was that they had weird screws, not a flat or Philips, 2 small holes, (safety screws) so I had to find something to get the screws out to take a cover off. The Second hurdle was the window was 3 floors up, which could be taken care of with a rope, which I would have to make, the bed sheets would be enough to take care of it. I knew I wore a size 9 shoe, and 1 of my feet on the wall was over half the cinder block, so I would use the cinder block as a tape measure. The final obstacle was the fact that I was in the room with only socks and underwear, this was going to prove to be an easy fix.
I started my hunt for an outlet or switch cover that had lose screws, I found one not on the floor, but in the library, I got the first screw out no problem, but the paper clip I was using wasn’t strong enough for the second screw. I put the first screw back in, I had to find a heaver paper clip or metal, I had seen something on my case workers file on me before that I figured would work, it was one of he clamp style clips, and the flip downs looked heavy enough to do the job. I requested a meeting with my case worker John, he always did his visits on Fridays, during his visit with me I asked him to get me a pop, he walked out of the visitor room to get me a pop from the vending machine and left my file on the table, I pulled the silver metal flip down off the clip and stuck it in my pocket. He left and I went back to my floor. I had to wait till Monday to go back to the library, to get the plate.
Monday came, I had my makeshift tool in my underwear band, I was focused on what I was trying to do, I was standing in a holding room with one other kid. I didn’t even realize who I was in the room with or was I even paying attention to him. The next thing I knew I felt heat on the back of my head, and smelled burning hair, I was on fire, the kid behind me had lit my hair on fire, I slapped my head and got it out and turned around and he was laughing at me. I went into full kill mode. I remember an officer pulling me off him, I had slammed his head into the walls and floor. I was taken to the infirmary, I had 1st degree superficial burns to the back of my head, I was about 5’9” 150 lbs., my hair was kind of curly but long before he set it on fire. The nurse put some bandages on the back of my head and sent me back to the floor. I lost out on my chance to get the plate. It was two weeks before I got to go back to the library. In the meantime, I had to deal with the fact that the police were considering charging me with another assault charge. There were talks of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder or just assault and battery. John told me that if they charged with the Assault with intent, that they would charge as an adult, the kid was in the ICU with a fractured skull.
The following week I had a court hearing, and the judge at the hearing addressed the possible pending charge’s, and that the prosecutor had submitted a charging document, and that he was taking it under advisement, he asked me a few questions about the incident, I told him I did not remember anything after I got my hair put out, only that the kid was laughing at me, I had been before this particular judge more than once, he made a ruling during that hearing that he was not going to entertain the charging document. That no charges would be brought, that it was more of a self-defense case.
The week after the hearing, I was able to go back to the library again, I still had my little tool, tucked into my elastic of my underwear. I got the first screw out no problem the second one took me a bit longer, but I got it, and I positioned a chair in place to hide the missing plate. I hid the plate in my underwear to get it back to my room, I stayed in my room most of the day, just to make sure I didn’t get into any problems that would get me into trouble. As soon as lock down came, I started working on the rope, I used the corner of the plate to start cuts in the flat sheet, I needed 3 pieces of sheet to make a section of rope by braiding it together, each 3 piece section was only about 6 foot long, I figured based on the height of the ceiling in the room that I would need 2 sections per floor to get me to the ground. I made up five sections and knotted them together, I ran out of bed sheet, I cut and ripped some pieces wide, I had to be careful not to get caught by the CO as he made his rounds every hour. The plan was to see if the officer would let me out to go to the toilet, and as I went back into my room, I would kick my shoes and pants into my room and close the door. My room was so far down the hallway with the lights out above my door, you couldn’t see the shoes or pants from the bathroom area, let alone the officer’s desk. You know what they say about the best laid plans.