Kai Leigh’s Blessing
Here’s a guy who got the message the hard way. At someone else’s expense. Boston Herald on a thug’s remorse:
The man who pulled the trigger and put little Kai Leigh Harriott in a wheelchair is speaking publicly from behind bars for the first time, to reveal how the girl’s forgiveness changed his life.
“I want to apologize to Kai Leigh, her mom and my community,” Anthony Warren says in a video that will be released on the eve of Boston’s second annual Peace Month. “To be blessed to be forgiven by a beautiful person like Kai Leigh and her family made me want to change.”
Kai Leigh was 3 years old in 2003 when Warren fired his gun to scare two women near her Dorchester home. One of the bullets severed the toddler’s spine as she played on her porch, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down.
At his sentencing three years later, Kai Leigh captured the city’s heart when she turned her tear-stained face to him and said, “What you done to me was wrong. But I still forgive him.”
Afterward, Warren apologized, and Kai Leigh’s mother embraced him.
Today, Warren is serving a 13- to 15-year sentence at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater. He is one of nine inmates featured in a video addressing urban youngsters.
“She gave me a second chance to really make a difference,” he says in “Voices From Behind the Wall.”
Kai Leigh and her mother will be on hand at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday when Warren’s message will be shown at the Dorchester House Multi-Service Center.
“What Anthony says about forgiveness is powerful,” said Stanley Pollack, executive director of the Center for Teen Empowerment, which helped produce the video with the state Department of Correction and City Councilor Chuck Turner’s office.
“There has to be a way back from mistakes. Otherwise, we create a cycle of hatred that builds on itself,” Pollack said.
The full video will be shown May 10 at the annual Youth Peace Conference from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Strand Theater in Dorchester.
Unfortunately no detail as yet on the nature of the change, or any way to judge the depth of sincerity.
Topics: crime, punishment
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:47 am on Saturday, April 26, 2008
5 Responses to “Kai Leigh’s Blessing”
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April 26th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Your final statement had to be said! I see another boondoggle on the horizon. One size fit’s all compassion.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Working in the probation and parole system has made be a tiny bit skeptical….
Gonna have to stick with MikeH’s view for now.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Convicts have a notorious habit of finding Jesus behind bars. I only hope that Warren is sincere, but the proof would be his life after incarceration. Until then, I reserve judgment.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Yep, there’s a certain clichéed, formulaic sound to those statements. A concrete plan for making amends would go down a bit better.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Well it appears that the H’s have it, including TBinSTLH. The perp will have to come back and do the parole thing again, in 40 years. Next case please.