Bad Streets
Team Owner
Warning: This story may be upsetting to some.
'I'll never forget what it was like to have four coffins at the same time.'
Terrence King was 15 when he stole a car, fled from Kenner police and crashed into a family, killing three children and a woman who'd been on their way to church.
Four more were critically injured, setting all on decades-long journeys of unimaginable grief, anger, guilt, recovery and forgiveness.
The road has been more difficult for some members of the James and Jones family. Breion Jones was just 4 when she was paralyzed from the chest down in the crash. Now 27, she still battles bitterness and heartbreak from the deaths of her siblings and the loss of a life free of the physical and medical obstacles she faces every day.
But other relatives have found peace, or at least acceptance, in the wake of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision last week to correct the effective life sentence King’s attorneys say he was unconstitutionally handed as a juvenile after his 1999 conviction on four counts of manslaughter.
On Monday, Jefferson Parish Judge Frank Brindisi of the 24th Judicial District Court amended King’s original 80-year sentence – four 20-year sentences that were to run consecutively. The state Supreme Court ordered that King’s sentences instead run concurrently, meaning he was released from custody Monday evening.
“Terrence, we forgive you. We forgive you. We forgave you 23 years ago,” Andrea James Manuel, 56, the sister and aunt of the crash victims, told King, now 38, during the hearing Monday morning. “Our prayer for you is that, when you leave this courthouse, you make the choice to live right, to do good and be a man that loves God more than you love yourself.”
Deadly chase
Authorities said King stole a Dodge Neon on Aug. 30, 1998, to visit a girlfriend, but fled when police spotted the car. The Neon was going 56 mph when King ran a red light and slammed into the James' family's Honda Accord at Airline Drive and South Atlanta Street, authorities said.
Dion James, 32; her son, Edwin James, 4; and her niece and nephew, Brittanie Jones 5, and Bobbie Jones, 8, were killed in the crash.
“I’ll never forget what it was like to have four coffins at the same time,” Manuel told the court on Monday.
Charged as an adult, King was convicted by a Jefferson Parish jury on July 15, 1999. Judge Clarence McManus sentenced the sobbing teenager to 20 years in prison for each count of manslaughter, but ordered consecutive sentences, meaning King would spend 80 years behind bars.
In December 2019, the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights (LCCR), a nonprofit that provides legal representation for children and adults sentenced as children, filed a motion on King’s behalf to correct what they called an unconstitutionally excessive sentence. Among the arguments was that King’s punishment violated the Eighth Amendment, which makes it illegal for a juvenile to receive a life sentence without parole for any crime other than murder.
“It’s clear Mr. King’s 80-year sentence also qualifies as an effective life sentence,” defense attorney Kristin Wenstrom wrote in one of the motions in the case. “No matter what Mr. King does to demonstrate that he’s rehabilitated, he’ll never have an opportunity for release, and his eventual death in prison is nearly a certainty.”
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office essentially agreed, noting that it was not the 20-year sentences but the order to run them consecutively that created a functional life sentence for King. The DA's office suggested concurrent sentences, according to court records.
But when the case came before Brindisi in May 2020, the judge declined. King’s attorneys appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which ordered the sentencing change in a ruling released May 11.
"Today is a hopeful beginning of a new chapter. The Louisiana Supreme Court recognized the injustice of Terrence’s continued incarceration and the district court has finally put an end to its error," LCCR Spokeswoman Renée Slajda said.
Grief and pain
Wilmareen James, now 80, still cannot talk about the crash, according to her daughter, Orlando James, 58. She hasn't driven since the day of the accident, and for years, blamed herself, wondering why she didn’t take a different route to church.
Orlando James’ son, Norman James, now 38, was injured in the wreck and has suffered mental illness ever since, she said. Orlando James said she cried for two years and battled clinical depression for another 10 before learning to live with her grief. She has come to accept King’s release.
“He was a kid that did the wrong thing, the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong judgement,” she said.
Her brother-in-law, Henry “J.J.” Jones, has struggled more with King’s release. The father of Brittanie, Bobbie and Breion Jones, he lost two young children and raised a third who survived as a quadriplegic. The losses and the life he had to lead in the face of so much tragedy has made forgiveness difficult.
But then he heard Breion Jones’ letter read to the court during the May 2020 hearing describing her anguish at not being able to become a cheerleader, her struggle with attractions to boys while worried about whether they’d only see her wheelchair, her disappointment that she would never be a mother.
“I never knew how she felt until she wrote that letter,” Henry Jones said. “It took something out of me. I’m not good with him getting out, but I know there’s nothing I can do about it because it’s the law.”
Chiwana Jones, Breion Jones’ mother, said she never had time to hate King. After the shock and disbelief of her children’s deaths, she had to care for the living.
“To move forward with my life, I had to just make peace with the whole situation,” she said. “Him getting out of jail won’t bring my kids back.”
A flicker of compassion for King began to grow after Chiwana Jones said she received a letter of apology from him a few years after he was sent to prison.
“He was writing on almost a first-grade level, and that kind of touched me,” she said.
Chiwana Jones had already devoted herself as her daughter’s personal tutor, re-teaching the youngster math and reading to overcome the learnings deficits and missed school time. Receiving King’s letter sealed for her the importance of an education.
Though she was in nursing school at the time of the crash, Chiwana Jones is a now a fourth-grade teacher at St. Alphonsus School in New Orleans.
“He (King) could honor my children by furthering his education,” she said.
Healing and living
Breion Jones graduated from L.W. Higgins High School in 2014. In 2019, she received an associate's degree in computer information technology from Delgado Community College. She was working as a ticket taker at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans until the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Breion Jones’ passion is makeup, a hobby she picked up as a coping mechanism to battle her depression. She sells lashes and glitter through her business, Be Breezy Cosmetics, and is angling to work as a makeup artist.
Her family recently made adjustments to a chair that allows clients to lay back, putting them in the perfect position for her to reach their faces for makeup applications.
"I’m a go-getter,” Breion Jones said.
Diana James, now 29, suffered a crushed skull and nearly lost a leg in the crash. She wasn’t expected to live. But she, too, was a fighter. Andrea Manuel raised her niece after her sister, Dion Jones’ death.
Diana James graduated from Edna Karr High School in 2012 and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Dillard University in 2019. She’s enrolled in Louisiana State University’s School of Allied Health with a goal of becoming a respiratory therapist, inspired by the medical professionals who helped her during her recovery, Manuel said.
While in prison, King's mother and father, as well as his grandparents died. “He will be alone in the world,” Manuel said.
King will find a home with the Louisiana Parole Project, a non-profit that supports people after their release from prison, Slajda said.
King did not speak during Monday’s hearing, but in a letter he read to the court last year, he took responsibility for his actions and apologized.
"If would [sic] like to trade my life for theirs, I would do it in a heartbeat because my intention was not to hurt anyone. But all I did, I just can’t forgive myself for that,” he said.
As Manuel spoke directly to King in the courtroom Monday, his eyes welled with tears, and he silently nodded in her direction.
“We want you to have a family,” she said. “We want you to have a wife and children. We want you to live. You are free. You are free. You are free. You have paid your debt to society.”