Everything starts somewhere, but where does this end?

The Reverend Andre Shumake describes what could probably be called the galvanizing force behind today's Violence Prevention Movement: the murder of Terrance Kelly.

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JURY SELECTION SET TODAY IN TRIAL OVER ATHLETE'S DEATH

By Bruce Gerstman and Karl Fischer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

RICHMOND - Groomed since he was a toddler to achieve a better life than what inner Richmond could provide, 18-year-old Terrance Kelly was preparing to leave for college Aug. 12, 2004.

But he never got to use his full-ride scholarship to the University of Oregon.

"I thought I could make it better for him," said his father, Landrin Kelly. "(Sports) could give him a free education."

The night of Aug. 12, 2004, someone shot the former De La Salle High School football star while he waited to pick up a friend in the Iron Triangle.

The death of the popular teenager outraged Richmond -- a city accustomed to turf battles, drugs and gang vendettas -- and breathed new life into the city's anti-violence movement.

"Here is a young man whose father had committed his life to helping him do well in school, go to college and lead a productive life," said the Rev. Andre Shumake, president of the Richmond Improvement Association. "To have him murdered on the streets of Richmond ... that was the final blow. Enough was enough."

Jury selection is set to begin today in the trial of 17-year-old Darren Pratcher, the teenager accused of killing Kelly over a simple grudge. Pratcher, who was charged as an adult, could serve 50 years in state prison if convicted.

He has pleaded not guilty.

An athlete from the start

Terrance Kelly came from a family of local athletes and, since he began to walk, his father wanted him to use sports to get a college education and become a professional athlete. At the day care agency his grandmother ran, his father taught him and the other toddlers to play T-ball.

At the age of 8, his father gave him a San Francisco 49ers outfit for Christmas and set up hitting bags in the back yard to practice blocking and running.

Landrin Kelly coached his son's baseball team through elementary school. He stayed on the sidelines while Terrance Kelly was in middle and high school, and attended all but two of his son's games.

"My life revolved around Terrance's," he said. "When you see your dad there, you're going to play harder to impress them."

Fred Harris has volunteered as a coach with the Richmond Steelers, a recreation organization, for 27 years and coached Terrance and his father on the Steelers' Pop Warner teams, He described Terrance Kelly as the kind of player who didn't care what position he played, so long as he could contribute.

Other players gravitated to him and looked up to him, Harris said. "Terrance was the kind of person we try and mold these kids into."

Terrance Kelly grew up in a family where education came as the first priority, said Landrin Kelly, who added that his mother sent him and his siblings to public schools outside of Richmond, as well as private Catholic schools. Terrance Kelly attended Catholic schools, graduating from De La Salle in Concord just months before he was killed.

Living in Richmond's Iron Triangle, he left his home at 6:30 a.m. for Concord and returned at 7:30 p.m., his father said. At night, he listened to music through headphones while doing homework to dull the constant distraction of police sirens outside his window.

He honed his abilities at De La Salle in football, basketball and baseball until his junior year, when he decided to focus on football.

"When a kid decides what he wants to do, he just wants to give it his all," Landrin Kelly said.

Attending the private school with kids from wealthier families sharpened his son's goals, Kelly said.

"He saw the fancy cars, and he knew where he came from," Landrin Kelly said. "By being exposed to that, he wanted nice things."

The night of Aug. 12, 2004, brought those goals to a halt.

The killing

The precise motive behind Terrance Kelly's death is unclear, but prosecutor David Brown says Pratcher disliked Terrance "for various personal reasons."

"It was a lot of personal animus from the defendant toward the victim," Brown said.

Pratcher's attorney, Jonathan Laba, could not be reached for comment.

According to the 2005 testimony of a witness to the grand jury, Pratcher had borrowed a rifle on the day of the killing. The Times is not naming witnesses to protect their safety.

Terrance Kelly arrived that evening at a home in the 300 block of Seventh Street in Richmond where his friend, the son of a woman his father was dating, was visiting his girlfriend.

Pratcher arrived moments later with his brother and friends, Pratcher's friend told the grand jury.

As Terrance Kelly waited in his car for his friend, Pratcher walked down the driveway and fired four shots into the vehicle, cocking the rifle each time, he said.

When Landrin Kelly got word of the shooting, he rushed to the scene without putting on shoes. His mother arrived and saw her grandson lying in the street.

"That ain't our baby, is it?" she cried out just before collapsing. She spent the next three days in the hospital and died two months later.

Today, Landrin Kelly wears an image of his son and his mother on a pendant hanging from his neck. It reads, "My Creator and My Creation."

He has remained angry at the teenager his son was waiting for and he has broken up with the boy's mother, he said.

"How can I be in a relationship where I'm mad at her son and will always be that way?" he said.

Richmond looks in the mirror

During the days after Terrance Kelly's death, Shumake and other faith leaders began agitating for meaningful dialogue about street violence.

Violence prevention became more of a collaborative enterprise in Richmond during late 2004 and early 2005, Shumake said.

"We wanted to hold town hall meetings in different parts of the city with an ultimate goal of having a larger meeting to bring the community together and develop some strategies," Shumake said.

Response from those meetings led to the Black-on-Black Crime Summit in June 2005, a gathering of community members and faith leaders who began planning ways to attack the roots of street violence -- namely poverty, lack of education and lack of economic opportunity -- from an African-American perspective.

Taking ownership of the issue was an important step for Richmond's black neighborhoods, Shumake said. In the past, city leaders shied away from race when talking about street violence, though most of the city's homicides involved black victims and suspects.

Shumake sees much more work to be done -- last year, 40 people were killed on city streets -- but he is optimistic that the progress will lead to better results in the future.

"After T.K. was killed, that was a wake-up call for the community to re-examine itself," Shumake said. "This is our problem, what are we going to do to fix it?"

Since his son's death, Landrin Kelly has devoted his time to help stop the violence by starting the Terrance Kelly Youth Foundation, where he organizes programs for low-income kids to get summer jobs, tutoring and to learn how to cook.

After his son was killed and before his mother died, Kelly said he pledged to his mother that he would focus his life in a positive direction.

"I promised I would help kids, and I promised I wouldn't retaliate in revenge for my son's death," Landrin Kelly said.

Staff writer John Geluardi contributed to this report.

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Please pray with us for the Kelly family, as well as all victims of violent crime. Now more than ever Richmond deserves a change for the better.