In his private stretch of no-man's land along Baltimore's Llewelyn Avenue, Albert Sims went to work every day, tended to his Cadillac, sought out a good game of checkers and waited in vain for his long-dead wife to come home.
But instead of welcoming his beloved Ella Mae to the house they'd shared at 1620 Llewelyn -- the last occupied dwelling on a desolate block of dead-end rubble -- the 77-year-old janitor was preyed upon by burglars and kids who had fun making him miserable.
Rocks were thrown at the elderly man's house, his car and his person. And three break-ins have been reported since Memorial Day -- Sims' reward for clinging to well-worn comforts on a crime-riddled block that everyone else had fled.
Now, Sims is gone too. Said to be no more aware that he is accused of killing a boy than the fact that his wife is gone for good, Sims sits in the city's central lock-up charged with the Sunday night shooting of 15-year-old Jermaine Jordan.
After Sims' arrest, his unguarded house was broken into twice, once after police had boarded it up. Officers arrested two men and recovered a box of jewelry belonging to Sims' late mother. And his Cadillac, vandalized and ransacked on Monday, was towed by police to keep it safe.
Police say Jermaine -- whose parents sent him to a Georgia military school two years ago to escape the street warfare in Baltimore -- was riding bicycles Sunday night with a group of boys who threw a brick at Sims' 1984 Cadillac DeVille.
Back home for a two-week vacation, Jermaine was shot once in " the back and collapsed in an alley behind the row of houses across from Sims' home. Services for Jermaine are scheduled for 10: 30 a.m. Monday at the March Funeral Home on East North Avenue.
The case is nearly identical to a 1994 East Baltimore case in which retired steelworker Nathaniel Hurt fatally shot a 13-year-old boy who was with a group of children vandalizing Hurt's car. Gov. Parris N. Glendening commuted the 65-year-old man's five-year prison sentence in December after he had served 14 months.
And like the Hurt case, Sunday's incident -- in which an otherwise peaceful senior citizen was pitted against chronic harassment by youngsters -- has folks wondering where to lay their sympathies and others unashamed to say that some of today's youth deserve whatever they get.
Said 68-year-old Francis Hayward Brown, who lives about two blocks away: "Some of the people I've been talking to, especially elderly people, are sorry the young man got killed but they're not sorry the man shot him. The elderly have been having a pretty rough time with young people -- you just can't seem to get them to see that older people should be able to walk down the street without getting beat up."
Retired Bethlehem Steel worker Robert F. Goode, 84, moved out of 1609 Llewelyn Ave. a year ago after breaking a hip. He'd lived there for about 30 years and now resides with a son in Northeast Baltimore.
"The longer I stayed, the worse it got," he said, citing the street's drug problems. He also was critical of unruly children. Recalling an incident when "a 7-year-old boy cussed me out," he lamented that "people don't raise children no more."
Such youngsters, said Alfreda Hill, a longtime Sims friend, singled him out as a target for pranks even though he gave candy to neighborhood children, many of whose snapshots decorated his home.
Hooligans, said Hill, loved to throw rocks at Sims' car, a prized possession he bought used about 18 months ago.
Attorney Mitchell A. Greenberg said his client admits firing two shots from his .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun after hearing a ruckus near the car Sunday evening. But Sims had no idea he'd hit anything until police rammed down his door to arrest him nine hours later.
Sims is now aware that a child is dead, said Greenberg, but doesn't understand how grave a matter that is compared with his other concerns -- like getting back to work.
Jacqueline Smith, Sims' niece, arrived from Georgia on Tuesday and visited her uncle's condemned house for the first time yesterday, sorting through belongings ransacked by intruders.
Smith said her uncle's routine was simple: He went to work as a janitor at a Baltimore County development firm and came home. He shunned the telephone, preferring to talk in person, and kept family matters to himself. Every fall, he returned to his hometown in Americus, Ga., to hunt.
Inside the rental property -- now in such a shambles that the family will leave most of his belongings to a city wrecking crew -- is unopened mail dating to 1972.
His wife, Ella Mae, died of pneumonia in 1984, but Sims apparently couldn't accept that his partner was gone. He kept her clothes neatly folded in a dresser for her return and refused to turn on an air conditioner she'd bought 20 years ago because, said Hill, "he didn't want to touch her things."
Smith spoke with her uncle in jail Wednesday night and described him as confused and wanting his eyeglasses and key ring. He also wanted to go back to work and was worried that he wouldn't be home for his wife if she returned.
"His work, that's what he's upset with," said the lawyer. "He is mad that he is unable to go to work. He spent 20 minutes telling us how to find a key ring he wants."
As Smith arrived yesterday at her uncle's house in a rental car, she was surprised to find that her father -- Sims' half-brother Carl Smith -- had just arrived from Atlanta, a Greyhound ticket protruding from the gas station attendant's shirt pocket.
Giving her 68-year-old father a hug, the woman wailed: "They charged him with first-degree murder, Daddy."
Waymon LeFall, a west-side barber with a shop at Edmondson Avenue and Brice Street, said the arrest of a 77-year-old man was the talk of his shop among older folks this week.
LeFall's Jaguar has been shot up numerous times, he said, and bullets have come into the store and whizzed by his head. Although he owns a gun, he says he has never used it.
"I want to go and take someone out myself for pelting a car that's just sitting there and not doing a thing to nobody," said LeFall, 60. "I have a lot of sympathy for that old man. Shooting people is not the answer, but I guess he just got fed up."
It's easy to say call the police, said LeFall, but a lot of people are afraid to bring in the cops or yell at unruly kids for fear of retaliation.
"It's tense. It's always tense," said LeFall, noting that one wrong word to a child can trigger obscenities and threats and that one day he might just get fed up enough to do something he would regret. "You have to know how to be careful about what you say."
The generation gap, said James P. McGee, on staff at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and chief psychologist for the state police, goes back to biblical times.
There will always be tension between those who believe they've seen it all and those who think they know it all, McGee said. But in areas of utter squalor like Llewelyn Avenue -- Sims' home and 21 empty buildings slated to be wiped off the map since news of the tragedy broke -- anything goes.
"It's no accident that these things take place where they do. Kids go into an area like that and feel that city elders have totally abandoned it. No one cares. Under those circumstances, why would they feel respect for elders?" said McGee. "The elderly gentleman also realizes that he's been stranded. Why would this guy reasonably expect the city to come and help him? The block itself says loud and clear that the city doesn't care, [that] if you're under threat you have to protect yourself because nobody else will."
Those likely to sympathize with the plight of Sims, McGee said, are those who have lived through his experience with "youth perceived as nameless, faceless thugs with no identity other than predators. From there, its very easy to go to the next step" where their lives don't matter.
All life is sacred, holds the Rev. Sy Peterka, the pastor of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church at Druid Hill Avenue and Mosher Street and one of the chairs of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a church-based advocacy group.
At a noon prayer service on Tuesday, the death of Jermaine Jordan and the arrest of one of their peers for the shooting dominated discussion among the seniors who came to worship at Immaculate Conception.
"I listened to them share the anguish they had for both the child and the elderly man," said Peterka. "Taking a life is something you can never take lightly, yet there was compassion for both sides."
Jackie Campbell, 70, took part in the discussion with mixed emotions.
"I can understand the man's frustration, but I also have a very deep feeling about keeping weapons in your house. I can't see where pulling a gun is the answer," Campbell said. "Most of us felt that this was just a horrible thing -- horrible for the child and his family and horrible for the man who's now in jail."
Louise Turks, 87, also lifted her heart in prayer at the meeting.
"We got to do something with these children," she said. "I don't have a solution."
Pub Date: 7/10/98