{"id":37443,"date":"2014-09-22T17:07:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37443"},"modified":"2014-09-22T17:08:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:08:35","slug":"poverty-environment-helped-set-toledo-teens-on-path-to-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37443","title":{"rendered":"Poverty, environment helped set Toledo teens on path to murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poverty, environment helped set Toledo teens on path to murder<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Toledo Blade<\/a>
\nToledo, Ohio
\n2014-09-21<\/p>\n

Roneisha Mullen<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n

Rose Russell<\/strong>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n

First of two parts<\/em><\/p>\n

By the time Shamus Groom was 11 years old, he was already drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. At 14, he saw a gun for the first time, and at 15, he was occasionally \u201cpacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2000, Groom, who moved from Adrian<\/a> to Toledo<\/a> as a teen, was sentenced to 15 years to life for the 1998 shooting death of a 20-year-old North Toledo man. The victim was gunned down by Groom\u2019s half brother over a drug deal that went bad; Groom was present during the shooting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nShamus Groom, serving 15 years to life in the Belmont Correctional Institution in St. Clairsville, Ohio, says he and his younger brother were bounced around the homes of family members.
\nTHE BLADE\/AMY E. VOIGT<\/small><\/p>\n

Printess Williams, a lifelong Toledoan, pleaded guilty in 2003 to killing four people \u2014 two in 1994 when he was 16, and two in 2002 when he was 24. He was sentenced to 151 years in state prison.<\/p>\n

Groom and Williams are both black men. While violent crime isn\u2019t limited to the black race, there appears to be something awry when significant numbers of young black males are landing in one of two places: graveyards or prisons.<\/p>\n

Looking at their lives, it can be argued the environment Williams and Groom grew up in contributed as much to them becoming killers as their own decisions…<\/p>\n

…The chain of events that led to the murder convictions of Groom and Williams began long before shots rang out claiming the lives of almost half a dozen Toledoans.<\/p>\n

Born to a teenage mother and absentee father, Shamus Groom never fully knew what it meant to have a stable home. He and his younger brother, both of mixed race, bounced around the homes of family members while his mother worked odd jobs to take care of them.<\/strong> The boys were left with their \u201cfoster grandmother\u201d when their mother moved out of the country to be with her new husband, who was in the military.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey took care of us, but we felt like outcasts, like guests,\u201d Groom said during an hourlong interview at Belmont Correctional Institution, a state prison in St. Clairsville, Ohio<\/a>, near the Ohio<\/a>–West Virginia<\/a> line, where he\u2019s serving his sentence. \u201cWe knew we didn\u2019t belong there, and they reminded us all the time.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poverty, environment helped set Toledo teens on path to murder The Toledo Blade Toledo, Ohio 2014-09-21 Roneisha Mullen, Staff Writer Rose Russell, Staff Writer First of two parts By the time Shamus Groom was 11 years old, he was already drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. At 14, he saw a gun for the first time, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1467,8,4481,20],"tags":[260,17926,17924,17925,17923,17927,17928],"class_list":["post-37443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-law","category-media-archive","category-social-work","category-usa","tag-ohio","tag-printess-williams","tag-roneisha-mullen","tag-rose-russell","tag-shamus-groom","tag-the-toledo-blade","tag-toledo-blade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}