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Boot camp beating victim's
grandmother seeks justice : Jury selection begins Monday for the
trial in the boot camp death
September 22, 2007
By Abbie Vansickle
Martin Lee Anderson: taken
Martin Lee Anderson's grandmother is seeking
Martin Lee Anderson - may justice be served and
hours after entering the boot
justice for her grandson who died after he was
may he rest in peace
camp
beaten on his first day at a Florida boot-camp
PANAMA CITY -- She still remembers
her grandson lying on the emergency room stretcher, hours from
death.
Martin Lee Anderson's head rolled
from side to side. Blood poured from his mouth. His dreadlocks had
been shaved. She put her hand on his chest, felt his heart beating
way too fast. She talked to him. He didn't answer.
Reto Williams turned to a guard
from the boot camp Martin had reported to the day before, the only
other person in the room.
"What happened to Martin?" she
asked.
"I don't know, I don't know," Lt.
Charles Helms Jr. replied, she remembers.
The memory still rankles, the wound
that won't heal.
"He lied to me," Williams, 63,
says. "He lied."
When she filed charges against her
grandson, she never imagined any of this.
After 14-year-old Martin and his
friends stole her car during church services and went on a joyride,
it was Williams who asked for punishment. Her grandson had started
hanging with a bad crowd, and she wanted him back on the straight
and narrow.
Now, from her little pink house on
Redwood Avenue, she can see a daily reminder of it all: the cemetery
next door that is home to Martin's grave.
* * *
Since her grandson's death in 2006
after boot camp guards roughed him up, she has stayed quiet amid the
clatter. State politicians closed all the boot camps. Martin's mom
got an attorney, received millions in a settlement and moved out of
town. Even the national head of the NAACP came to Panama City on
Martin's behalf.
On Monday, jury selection will
begin in the trial of seven guards and the camp's nurse, charged
with aggravated manslaughter of a child in his death. It's the
biggest case anyone here can remember since Gideon vs. Wainwright,
the 1963 case of a Panama City pool hall burglary that went all the
way to the U.S. Supreme Court, guaranteeing everyone in America the
right to an attorney.
Like Gideon, Martin Lee Anderson's
life served a larger purpose, Williams says. It's no coincidence
that Martin was born on the birthday of another man of that name --
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. God doesn't make mistakes.
"When God took my grandson, he used
him," Williams says. "He took him to use him. He took him to show
Florida what they're doing to the kids, it ain't right. What was his
name? Martin. He had to live up to that name."
Williams' faith, already strong,
has only grown since Martin's death, she says as she sits in the
cozy living room that smells of the spaghetti boiling in a pot in
the kitchen. A well-worn Bible and reading glasses rest on the
couch. Another grandson rocks in a chair on the porch.
She's helping to raise that boy as
she did Martin, who spent countless afternoons with her while his
mom, Williams' daughter Gina Jones, worked long hours at Burger King
to pay rent. Williams taught Martin to believe in God, to work hard,
to be responsible for his actions.
That's why she wanted him to face
consequences when he took the car.
"I wanted him to understand, you
can't just go around and do this," she says. "It was to let him know
that, 'Hey, you're going down the wrong road. You can't do this.'"
She thought he'd get community
service, but he was sent to boot camp instead. Shortly before he
left, she showed him his grandpa's Army uniform. Williams always
dreamed Martin would grow up to be like his grandpa. Join the
service. Bring honor to the family.
Martin tried on the uniform. He was
grinning. Williams danced around him, singing, "I'm in the Army now!
I'm in the Army now!"
As he walked out the door, she
said, "I love you." He smiled.
'Helms is the one'
The next morning, her daughter came
to her door. Something was wrong. Williams headed to the hospital.
There, she saw two men from the boot camp. She says that's when
Helms told her he didn't know what happened.
The doctors decided to fly Martin
to a bigger hospital in Pensacola. Martin's mom went, too, but
Williams went home. She sat in her bedroom, praying.
Williams said her daughter plans to
go the trial.
But don't expect to find Williams
in the courtroom. She has never watched the boot camp video and
doesn't plan to, she says. She blames only one person for Martin's
death: Lt. Helms. He was in charge of what happened that day in the
boot camp yard, she says, and he should take responsibility for
Martin's death.
"Helms is like the person that's
leading the war," she says. "Helms is the one."
Helms' attorney, Waylon Graham, was
out of town Friday and unavailable for comment, according to his law
office staff.
Williams said the guards met their
match that day in the yard, that Martin tried to fight back because
his grandmother always told him to never let anyone abuse him.
"They didn't know he was a
God-fearing woman's grandson," she says with a chuckle.
It was all part of God's plan, she
says.
"What an ultimate sacrifice," she
says. "There's a reason why he was there."
After Martin's death, Williams had
visions of him. Whenever there was big news in the case, she heard
him knocking at her front door, she says. She demonstrates, putting
her hand into a fist and rapping the air.
She'll spend jury selection and the
trial as she usually does, at home with her grandkids.
"The attorney had said they
couldn't get a fair jury here," she says. "As a woman of God, I
said, 'It doesn't matter where it is. It's all in God's hands.'"
She'll pray quietly in her room,
out of the spotlight. If something goes wrong at the trial, she
believes Martin will come and tell her, that she'll hear his knock
at her door.
Times researcher John Martin
contributed to this report. Abbie VanSickle can be reached at
vansickle@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3373.
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