First came the nightmare of the murder. Now it’s nightmare piled on nightmare, and it does not end.
Cedirick Steele, 18, made the dean’s list at Bunker Hill Community College. He delivered Meals on Wheels. “He had big plans, big dreams,” his mother said yesterday wearing a sweatshirt stenciled with a letter to her firstborn son.
He was shot seven times on March 14, 2007, allegedly in a random thrill-kill by gang members who’d never even met Steele before. They were just looking for somebody to shoot.
Monday, for the second time in six months, a Suffolk jury deliberated for five days but could not reach a verdict in the murder trial of Antwan “Twizz” Carter and Daniel Pinckney Jr., both 21. This time, a star witness recanted after Carter allegedly tried to kill her, too, telling a friend, “If she’s not history, I’m history.”
The last time, in September, after seven days of deliberations, a jury was deadlocked, 11-1. Lawyers Weekly reported that the lone juror holdout was approached outside the courthouse by a man who made a gunlike motion and said “bang.” The juror nevertheless kept deliberating after insisting the threat was unrelated to the trial.
Now the Steele case will be tried a third time.
“I don’t know how I can go through this again,” said Natasha Steele – seeing in court his blood-stained white T-shirt; the bullets taken from his face and neck; the defendants smiling and joking.
Said her niece, who requested anonymity: “It’s like it’s a joke or a basketball game with somebody winning or losing.” And now the defense is thinking they’re winning, she added.
“They score a point in court and cheer,” the niece said.
Natasha Steele’s Roxbury apartment has become a shrine to her late son. Inside her front door is a glass case and suspended inside, as if a young man were wearing it, is her son’s sweatsuit, pants and Adidas sneakers. Beside the shoes is Cedirick’s hairbursh, his hair still held in its bristles. His old bedroom is filled with his Halloween masks, stuffed animals, farewell messages from friends.
“We want to have faith in the justice system, but what do I tell my other son?” asks Natasha Steele. That son is now 18 himself, angry and confused and unable to understand “why Cedirick is in the cemetery three years.
“My insides are hollow,” Natasha Steele said. “And we still have no justice.”