Barton Glasser © News

July 11, 2003

Now what? It is the question that needs asking this morning.

Yes, I joined in the march. I milled beforehand in front of the modest Thrill Place home, signed the book and chatted with friends and relatives on the same front porch where the young boy fell dead.

I stood, too, on the lawn in the park, amid the hornets and mosquitoes, listening to the impassioned speeches, little of which actually made my notebook.

What now? What does any of this truly mean?

I wrote that down halfway through the march Thursday night in memory of 15-year-old Paul Childs. Both questions still stick with me.

I've been here before. If I live 100 years before I march again through a city street with the chants of hundreds of people and a man on a bullhorn ringing in my ears, "No justice, no peace!" it will be too soon.

It was in a different city last time, yes. It involved different killings. Same tears.

Does anything ever change? I have made my way even to here, yet the killing remains the same. The same chants, as if by reflex, ring out.

And somewhere in this town a young child lies cold on a coroner's slab. There will be a service and more tears, and another cemetery hole will be dug and filled in over yet another child.

Even the anger remains the same. Scores of strangers filled the street outside Helen Childs' home, some coming from many miles away. And they all had stories. Pick someone. Anyone.

There was Jose Jurado, 66, who never knew Paul Childs, but walked the several blocks from Pontiac Street to Thrill Place because he, too, knew people who'd died the way the young boy had last weekend.

He virtually forced me to listen to the story of his son. Of how on Sunday, the police pulled his son over, searched his car and forced him to walk home after they found nothing yet impounded the car anyway.

"It cost me," Jose Jurado said, his face filling with rage, "$100 to get the car out. The lady at the towing yard agreed it had been towed illegally, but that I would have to fill out a form to get the money back.

"This money, I had it for groceries I needed that morning. What was I to do for food? It is why I am here today."

Too many people had come to Thrill Place with such tales, stories I had heard so many times before. Almost 11 years ago today, police officers in my hometown had beaten a motorist. Nothing happened to them. Soon after, I watched the city go up in flames.

I thought of that as scores of people began arriving on Thrill Place. They had many reasons for being there, but their stories seemed very similar. The unfairness of it all.

Maybe that is how I began talking with 12-year-old Precious Conley.

She and her brother, Todd Spiller, 14, were standing all alone, just watching.

"He was my friend," Precious Conley said when I asked why she had come. She'd known Paul Childs for three years. "He was so nice," she said. "We walked home together from school all three years."

They both remembered how they met Paul, a developmentally disabled boy, whom they never considered to be any different from them.

"Paul, he just came up to me and started talking," Todd Spiller said. "He told me his name, asked me mine and where I was from. We just became friends.

"Oh, he'd mess with people - he'd chase you, you know, just playing around," the boy said. "But he'd never hurt anyone."

What did he think of what was playing out before us, I asked Todd Spiller. What was going through his mind?

"It's not fair, that's what I say. The man just shot him.

"No, I'm not scared of police now," he said. "I know, it might happen again. But hopefully not."

What would Paul, were it possible, think of all of this? Todd Spiller, for the first time, smiles.

"He'd say it's a nice gesture. He'd be here asking everybody, 'What's your name? What's going on?' trying to get to know them.

"Just being who he was."

And then, we all marched. It was on TV. We put it in the paper.

A few months from now, I'm guessing, few people outside of those who loved him will remember the name Paul Childs.

At least not until another teenager falls and another march and rally is organized.

I'll believe it won't happen again when it never does.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at (303) 892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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