Reflecting on Antonio's Life and Legacy

This message comes from Angie. Tackling a home project, Angie can connect you with pros who do such a good job you might ask them to be your kid's godfather Don't do that, just trust them to get the job done Find a pro for your projects at anngie. com That's angi d. com Before we start A note that this episode contains coursear and explicit language as well as the sound of gun violence Previously on, we keep us safe Do bllack lies matter to the SVD. We didn't kick them out. They abandon in this space. Chop existed for three weeks By the time Antonio Mays Junior arrived, the more dangerous side had prevailed. Do not walk around in the dark. It is unsafe whole space felt darker and angrier. Two black teens had been shot One of them was dead. His name was Antonio Mays Junror. Protesters at ChOop said he was in the white Jeep attacking them when he was killed. It's that white car that's been circling around, shooting more shots into tents Antonio Sr doesn't know what Antonio was doing during his days at Chop But he doesn't believe the protester's narrative. He's tell me he's going to make me proud. He was going to accomplish something. I remember if I was saying something about like friends and notot wanting to seem like a pussy or whatever. And I hold him, you have to not give a fuck about what other people think about you On june twenty sixth, twenty twenty Three days before Antonio Mays Jror was killed A small crowd gathers on a street corner in Chop. Hey, hey, okay, let them talk. Let them talk We've got a video this moment Yes, of course we understand that some of these changes will take time, But there are certain things on those demands that are immediately actable. It shows David Lewis, one of the breakout leaders of the protests that summer talking about the movement's goals. A partart of this is proving to Seattle to the world really that we can do these things ourselves. We don' to Right next to David, there is a tall kid wearing a black hoodie He has a gray baseball cap and he's wearing a medical mask around his mouth and nose This kid is Antonio Mays Juni. And he taps David on the shoulder and indicates he wants to speak I quest. Are you guys trying to change the system as well People in this crowd start pointing their phones and their recorders at him as he delivers a critique of policing How will that to been known that I wish that the police would have more supervision when it comes to their training to make sure that they're actually following their train. And what he's saying is Training is not enough to make real change. Because when they're on these streets, they disregard all of it. And that's where the harassment steps in and I'm tired of this. And at some point we're gonna fight back. I pe, but you're pushing us to the edge. And the crowd really responds to this. They start applauding when he speaks And for a few seconds, it seems like Antonio is speaking for the entire movement at Chop The team discovered this video of Antonio by combing through dozens of hours of live streams recorded by Omari Soalisberury. the journalists who covered the protests that summer. The Antonio we see on this video really matches the version of him that his dad told us about This idealistic kid who wrote the letter explaining why he wanted to go join the protests when he left home And this kid I wanted to make a better world But we've also heard Antonio got into a fight the night he died that he was angry And later that night, protesters thought he was attacking chop in a white jeep Aside from these brief glimpses, the last week of Antonio's life has been a mystery People have filled in that missing week. or whatever we don't know about Antonio with lots of rumors. I've heard accounts. A torrent of speculation So many theories. They came up repeatedly in interviews. alwaysways starting fights with people left and right. He had gotten so aggressive. Rumors about his intentions, about his character. I heard a lot of rumors about ving gang involvement, gang initiation, doing donoughuts and waving guns, shooting into the sky, trying to be wild and have fun. Some of them have been used to excuse or justify his killing onn Facebook right after the shooting One protester posted Fuck around and find out and then added very quickly and cleanly dealt with by security What a shot. Someone else responded. Another said I couldn't have done it better myself Watching that video of Antonio, it's hard to reconcile the kid being cheered on by the crowd. person who'd be shot and killed days later. How did he go from fighting for the cause to being viewed as a threat to the camp So what happened to Antonio Achop We spent months retracing Antonio's steps. becausecause we realized understanding his life leading up to Chop is key to unlocking what took place the night he died From NPRs embedded with KOW on the Seattle Times This is we keep us safe. I'm Syidney Brownstone. I'm Will James. This is episode four This message comes from MII Health. CEO Joanna Strober shares the personal experience that led her to start a virtual care platform for women in paramenopause and menopause I was having anxiety. I had gained weight, I wasn't sleeping and my primary care doctor never once said that perhaps I was in perimenopause and that all these things could be related to my hormones. So I had a really tough time for quite a while. and a friend recommended that I try a concierge doctor she prescribed hormones for me combination of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone And I felt very relieved that I had this care and I also had a lot of sadness that I had spent such a long period of time going through this and not getting the right care And so essentially, what we really want to do at MIDI is democratize access to this type of care MIDI Health, committed to helping women in midlife with pamimenopause and menopause care, accessible via telehealth visits. at join mId. com This message comes from IXL. IXL provides personalized learning and powerful insights that help teachers boost achievement and understand student progress in real time Learn more at xl. com slash npR. Rueppport for this in PR podcast and the following message come from Carvana. Selling yourour car? Carvana has offers so good, they're almost inexplicable. Sell your car one hundred percent online in minutes. Visit cararvana. com today. There's been one interview that has played an outsized role in defining who Antonia was at Chop It's with a homeless protester named Sierra Walker, and it was recorded on a Seattle street just days after the shooting I'm Antonio and Robt Street sister Sierra tells a journalist from the Daily Mail that she was part of a street family that included Antonio and his best friend at chop, Robert West. Sierra says she spent a lot of time with them And she calls Antonio by his nickname at Chop I just want to say it's forever pockets's world In this interview, Sierra brings up a rumor So about Top saying that my little brothers was in a gang, that Antonio had a gang affiliation. We'd heard this same rumor on social media People were posting online right after the shooting that the boys were doing a gang drive by, that they were part of the bloods And that self appointed shop security had prevented a mass shooting by firing back We wanted to learn more about this So I found Sierra on Facebook in twenty twenty five And I called her up So Sara, can you tell me how you met Antonio There was four you young boys that was protesting. and I just got attached to on Tony Hall She confirmed Antonio arrived in Seattle as a protesor. He told me he was just in Seattle protesting because his dad wouldn't let him protest in California Sierra is now in her thirties But from talking to her, it seems like she developed an attachment to Antonio that was almost like they were the same age You see Pocket, you see me, like? What about him stood out to you How he was a ride or die. He didn't play about who he called family. What does that mean? I got into it with some females and he geted it. He's like, look, you guys are not gonna joke my sister And he getted the argument This is someone who stuck up for her in fights. He didn't let me get into it with nobody. And not only that, she said that He could pick fights too My brother was doing dumb shit tryrying to fight with everybody trying to He was kind of a bully. I'm not gonna lie It was kind of weird to hear that from someone who really seems to care about Antonio. It did remind me though, of the story we heard of Antonio getting into a fight on the night he was killed I asked Sierra about that night. What do you think of the story that it was just like chop security at the barriers who got scared and shot up the car trying to like defend the tents around the precinct They don't sit right with me Like you don't believe it So you think it was targeted Yeah Why would someone want to get Antonio becausecause the type of person he was starting by Um trying to be a gang member and he wasn't What what gang was he trying to join blood How did you find out about that? Beacause the people that he was kicking with was Boods, like he He put in work for the streets, I guess. That's what they were saying. That's why he got killed What is Sierra implying here? Is she saying Antonio was trying to be in a gang or that he was trying to front, like he was trying to act like he was in a gang You know, I still really don't know and I'm not sure Sierra knows either When she talks about people saying he put in work for the streets, it seems like she's just repeating a rumor she's heard So what do you make of Sierra Well, she said something that is definitely not true She said she knew Antonio for months when in reality, she could have only known him for a matter of days because That's how long he was in Seattle But We have talked to other people who seem to be confused about how long ChOop lasted Yeah We got to say Antonio's dad has told us he's really mad G someomeone who knew Antonio for just a brief period of time is claiming to be his family talking like some kind of authority on his son The lies that those people up there told about my son You know, anger me so much. People get hungry for fame. And and they want some spotlight. They want to try to get whatever kind of shine they can So they'll make up lies I'm so proud of my son and he's none of what any of those people say just really makes me boil over the top because To say that you're my family Come on man. But I don't want to dismiss everything Sierra is saying out of hand Police believed that gangs were a big problem at Shop and they talked about this in internal emails at the time On the same day that Antonio was killed Police intelligence report said Chop quote has become a center of lawlessness, unquote, for gang members. This report mentions a couple of local Seattle gangs, but not the bloods And there's one more thing Sierra told me and it's about the Jeep that Antonio and Robert were later shot in The streets are saying that he beat somebody up and robbed them and that's how he got the cheat She heard the boys ended up inside the white jeep because they stole it From the very beginning, we've known that the white jeep Antonio and his friend were riding in when they were shot been stolen. question that's been unresolved for years is were Antonio and Robert the ones who stole it And if so, How did that play into the shooting We tried to talk to the guy whose car was stolen He declined to speak with us, but through court records, we were able to get our hands on a video of an interview he did with an investigator So why dont we just start with what happened tonight with regards a stone car wind? Sure, I'll just give you the start ofight oion. In the video, the victim tells police he was walking home to his apartment around two thirty in the morning Not long before the shooting happened. As I was walking along, You guys just ran across the street and started A costing me He says that two teenagers emerge from the park with two weapons A knife Kicke. And all you he is like Where the fuck is the money And they're like shoving me around. and so I hand them my wallet and they grab my phone and they smash it with what looks to be a pickane. I manage to run away, but they manage to get me in the wike with a pickane. And as they start roughing him up, he says Guys, my Jeep is right there just take my fucking Jeep. It's parked just like a block away from the park You know, they grabbed my keys in my bag and ran off with it and I follow the ground At that point it's a little bit of a blur Once his attackers run off, the victim yells for help chop medics start treating him for his wounds And so if they put a tournquet on my leg and while they were doing that, I heard Jeep In this interview with police, he says one of his attackers was wearing a mask They appear to be not white but not quite black And he says one of them had an accent accents like Southern acc I it was like Ethiopian or something like that Antonio has dark skin, and Robert is lighter skinned, but they're both black And also, neither of them had Ethiopian accents or anything like an Ethiopian accent. So did he mishhear them whereere the boys using fake accents during the robbery Or was it not them at all? The most obvious person to ask about all this is Robert West, who was fourteen years old when he survived the shooting later that night Robert suffered a brain injury in that shooting, and when we first reached out, his lawyer told us he wasn't in any shape to talk with us. But then we finally got our chance to hear from Robert Last year after Antonio's dad filed his wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Seattle. An attorney for the city interviewed him We are on the record the time is approximately ten thirteen AM. beginning in the deposition of mis. Robert West. And we got our hands on the video. Counsel, will you please introduce yourself, who are you're representing today My name is Alexandra Nkin and I'm representing the city of Seattle of an ocean I represent Barberta West today In the video, the cameras pointed squarely at Robert He's about twenty years old now And you can see the permanent damage left behind by the bullet that he took to the head Do you have any hobbies like working on cars. I wasn't to be a mechanic Are you working to be a mechanic? I mean, I can no moreore. My career is st for I wanted to. It's my biggest dream. Robert struggles with seizures. I mean, if I get too nervous, it's possible have a seizure. He says he has significant memory loss and still lives at home with his mother who helps him with his medical needs The deposition drags on for almost three hours It takes a long time to get to the night of the shooting. Robert's lawyer keeps interrupting to object to the city attorney's questions He objects almost two hundred times. Objection, Badrey. Objection. Relevant. Objection. Objection. Ojection harassing You're harassing my client. I'm harassing you at this point, Mr. Ohan, because you constantly are making the same objections Let the record reflect that council is attempting to harass me Before the deposition turns to the shooting The city attorney asks Robert about his actions in the year before ChOop whether he had stolen two different cars whether he was involved in a gas station robbery instruct him not to answer criminal questions of when he was thirteen years old You have no basis for doing that. He was a minor when he was thirteen years And are you his guardian, sir We couldn't find any records to confirm these allegations, but in any case, Robert says he doesn't recall what the city attorney is talking about I do now remo over. Then the questions turn to chop When did you meet Antonio Me I couldn't tell you U How often did you hang out with Antonio Mz Objection vague fromrom what I remember else would their do that be there Robert says he doesn't remember much from the night of the shooting because of that brain injury to the bullet hole. I got shot It went straight to my face. This is the frontal lobe. This's the most important part of your brain. But How would you like me to remember anything? But earlier in his recovery, Robert did seem to remember something The city attorney refers to a piece of paperwork from a brain rehab facility Robert was at a few years ago It says Robert told rehab staff he stole a vehicle with a friend who died Do you recall telling your doctors that You got shot at after stealing a car with friends objection S seems to l. You want me to tell you is that what you're looking? Do you recall telling that to your doctor? m. I don't recall Robert says someone else handed him the keys to the White sheep And he says the man who gave him those keys was Ethiopian An Ethiopian no What was the Ethiopian's name? I could not tell you that How do you know he was Ethiopian? I mean, his appearance, his accent But who knows it could be someone else The city attorney then asks Robert if he looked at what the car theft victim told the police, that one of his muggers had an Ethiopian accent. She seems to be implying that Robert is making his story match the victims. Did you review the police statement in preparation for your deposition today? No no Th just as this interview gets deeper into the night of the shooting. Do you have an answer, Mrter West And this what for that decision? You got it, you got it.. two thesees, Robert.. I mean you go off the record? Yep. okay, Robert How easy. off the record And that ends the deposition So did Antonio and Robert steal the Jeep Well, when Antonio Sr.'s wrongful death lawsuit went to trial, we learned a little more. Police presented evidence they found in and around the Jeep the morning after the shooting This evidence suggested Antonio and Robert may have stolen it Police found a knife like the one the car theft victim described and some items that were stolen from him But the judge noted this evidence was inconclusive, and he dismissed it because he didn't see how the car theft was connected to Antonio's death In the end, the trial never resolved the question of who stole the Jeep We weren't able to either This question of who Antonio was and what he was doing the night he was killed has been used to justify or excuse his death People have said he was trying to join a gang Dadd hey stole a car that he was trying to attack people with that car We wanted to know Was Antonio the type of person who could be a threat to chop Or did protestters have it all wrong So We went looking for people who knew Antonio before chop. You don't want to be no gangster and nothing like that. He just wanted to be artists. That's after a break This message comes from IXL IXL's level up diagnostic gives immediate benchmark results along with personalized action plans that link directly to IXL's skill practice, more at axl d. com slash npR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab, with its original podcast on Investing. Each week, you'll get thoughtful, in depth analysis of both the stock and the bond markets. Listen today and subscribe at schchwab dot com slash on invvesting or wherever you get your podcasts This message comes from Odu Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. Start managing your business with one unified system Odoo is the all in one business management software. Trive for free today at Odu. com slash NPR podcasts This message comes from Ali Looking for more targeted support from your supplements, New Oi prerecise probiotics are formulated to go beyond general gut health, with options designed to support areas like skin, stress response, and metabolism. Get precise with your probiotics and choose support that aligns with your needs. With thoughtfully selected ingredients and specific benefits in mind Ollie helps make daily wellness feel more straightforward. Find Olli prerecise probiotics at a Walmart near you When we first started investigating Antonio's death we discovered a whole other part of his life that changed our understanding of who he was We went looking for his digital footprint And that led us to a profile on this website where people post their original songs It's called Bandlap. Yeah h h. If Pocket was one of Antonio's identities This website introduced us to another one, Rico, which was the name he went by in Banlap. And he was a prolific poster. Lots of songs he sang and wrote himself. I'm trying to be with you baby girl, you wk whole mood. I'm trying to swat with you so let's see what it's going do Finding this profile was a revelation. It was a repository of things that he created and put into the world to represent himself and how he was feeling. And it's also like a diary In some ways, it felt like maybe the closest we could get to where Antonio's mind was in the weeks and months before he was killed. Whatah would mean About a week before Antonio left for Seattle He posted a song on his band webpage. Clear visions, cldy days. Sn, misses It was called Clear Visions And this is the last song that Antonio would post Sitting here like was the point of it all. As a kid, I just really wanted to go stand forall, have a ball with all my people, with all my peers. Now I understand they want me to disappear because the color of my skin. They're saying it's a sin so now I'm sitting here fearing for the safety of my kid. I cannot allow that. I gotta go step back for all my people I'm gonna have to go give back delivering a message straight to your dome. I hope that you receive it all the way home because the color of my skin, that's a blessing. God told me to use it like another weapon, not to give hate, but to just give love because all lives really matter. I'm never been giving up to this day that we equal, I will speak for my people that believe that there will be is equal It's about moving forward. It's about understanding these limits placed on you by society overcoming them and fighting against them Ultimately, it's a song about resistance Inisible wings open wide soill it's touching the sky. I'm the truth. Iint living alive. One thing we've heard about Antonio is that at home in southern California His social circle was really small He was homeschooled during the last year of his life And a family member said he was almost always with his dad or his little sister, that he didn't really have a lot of friends outside of his family But it turns out, that was wrong Antonio did have friends And we find posts from them on Banlab long after Antonio has died grieving him, saying RIP Rico and posting songs in his remembrance called a few of them up and learned they were spread out across the United States I'm in Fornce, Alabama. I live in the Chicago area. I'm living in Okai. and they were teenagers when they knew him Well, I grew up with Rico as a childhood friend They tell me that Antonio was a goofy guy who was kind of like an older brother figure. He didn't take anything serious. He was always laughing. No matter if he was going through something or he had a bad day, he was always there to hear what you had to say He would encourage people about their music. He was just trying to be nice because I was like There's no way it was that good He wanted to make music. To make a change in the world, let his voice be heard Who are some of his favorite artists YG and this reheustle Supak was one of his greatest inspirations and wasn't just a rapper, he was an activist He ended up forging these really meaningful connections with people. He told me like helping his back cook and he made promises to see them I actually was gonna have my oneta and You're like, you're coming to M Piza no matter what It was like, how by you at Teddy bear? He wasn't dam it He didn't come to Yr Kensesee. Yeah, because you gotay The month before Antonio leaves for Seattle, he also posts another song called Whoopen. I hate when these niggas be thinking they crip and I don't get h fuck ' I'm. It sounds gangs around. nigg pull up. we ain't making any wishes we're shooting them shots like we swishhing. At the end of the song, there's a su. It's a blood's call out And also the name of a song by one of his favorite rappers, YG It's language that suggests there's some kind of blood gang affiliation or aspiration I ask Antonio's friends about the rumors about gang involvement and also about the fact that In a lot of pictures we see of Antonio, he's wearing red, which is the blood's color Did he ever talk about that? and what did that mean to him The red I knew for a fact I was just his favorite color Universally, they tell me that Antonio was not a gang member You was never the type of person like I wanted it to be a game room No Absolutely not. That's not what he stood for He was a sweetheart It doesn't seem like him Talking about being in a gang or using gang symbols was something that kids just did online trying to become rappers or get big in the music industry.' to be gangster and nothing like that. He just wanted to be arts Songs or songs, peopleople lie to get famous all the time And everybody claims the mean gang sexed, but Re nobody was in them unless you were in them. You know, he's just one of those kids and, you know, trying and keep up with everybody. Talking to these kids from Bandlab gives us a way to see multiple versions of Antonio existing at the same time bothoth Pocket and Rico Right, you've gott to wonder if these rumors about gang affiliation, these rumors that for some people have justified Antonio's death, all just a result of a kid who is trying on different identities like so many other people at Ch And did a dangerous place change how a sensitive, idealistic sixteen year old showed up there Mad Antonio, we u We kind of met through the whole music thing Andre Colbert would describe himself as Antonio's best friend. He lived in Maryland and he was fourteen when he met Antonio on Banlab It really just started off as like, you know a whole online friendship, music type of friendship. and throughout the entire quarantine, we just started getting closer. We laughed and cried together. One thing that a lot of these Bandlab kids had in common is that their schools were shut down because of the pandemic So their social lives were in some ways limited to the internet And they were struggling with that It was just a repeated cycle, just doing the same thing every day, waking up, eating, taking a shower recording a song and then right back to it the next day Andre, who also goes by Dreay, was able to reveal a part of Antonio that we hadn't known about S was going through a lot mentally. We both were. What kind of stuff was he going through depression and anxiety Even though we hear from some of Antonio's friends that he was really close with his dad, Draay tells us that he also got into big fights with him Like what kind of conflicts would they have they would get into like big arguments like really bad ones, they would like bother him really bad. like they would bother his mental state Antonio's dad was really protective of him He tried to shelter Antonio from bad influences. He didn't allow him to have a phone And we know he didn't want Antonio to join the protests. You know, some dads want the best for their sons. My dad was hard on me too around that time and You know, I didn't see that him being hard on me was him just showing how much he loved me until after I graduated. Dreay said one of the reasons that Antono was planning to go to Seattle was to meet up with another bandlab friend who lived in the area And Dreay had planned on joining him. I was thinking of doing the same I was happy to finally go and try to meet my best friend that I've been talking to for the past couple of months Dray didn't end up going, so Antonio went alone. And he said, you know, Antonio's reason for going to Seattle was to protest becausecause he really was big on that. likeike he was big on ending racism this up When Antonio gets to Seattle, he doesn't end up meeting any bandlab friends. He stays at chop I had like a bad feeling I was like, yo, I think you should go home, right. I tried to get him to go back And you know, he just felt like it was already too late. And he said he would calling back once his phone was charged. and I was like B be safe So Antonio did have a phone Apparently he did But his dad didn't know about it I think that was the last time you spoke on the phone and I think I The morning or night right before he died, he called me and I woke up and that was the last call I got And to this day, I still wish I picked that phone up You couldn't have known. Yeah, I'm still sick to my stomach about it D Dreay remembers this thing Antonio would talk about a lot this fear of racism and How It would probablyrobably catch up to him one day Like he didn't want his life to be taken because of racism. Like he was real He was scared I feel like he knew his time was coming th. Pace He said in multiple songs that he wouldn't make it past eighteen And, you know, I you know, I tried to Tell them multiple times to like, you, get that thought out of your head And then, you know, what happened happened if you actually didn't get to see eighteen. What questions do you still have about what happened to Rico I just I just want to know who did it. I just want Justice for him because it's been five years. there's no way they haven't already identified and did it It shouldn't take this long. It's been five years This is a tough question, but How did his death affect you Oh terribly Dreay says that Antonio was the first person he was really close to who had died And he returned to school in person and was failing all of his classes And it was just strictly off of that Yeah parents canure figure it out. I didn't go to class. I didn't just want to do anything He ended up graduating late Hose of his grief and his inability to perform academically at school while dealing with it years went on. like that's all I could think about because if I would have never agreed Yeah. You go down there and I'll me I'll meet you And if I would never said that, then you'd probably still be here I just feel he' partd of the person I become. that's really it You know, U Everything I've done in the past five years I've done it for him. I graduated high school for him because he never got to So I'm just hoping he's prroud him talking to people who knew Antonio for days and people who knew Antonio for years We start to see all these different futures he might have had. He might have been a rapper He might have inherited his dad's barbecue business He might have written his own fantasy novels. Sure, there's a future where he might have gotten in trouble or became a famous activist But what we're left with is that Antonio will never get to have any of those futures He was still trying on different identities and He was killed before he settled on one. beforefore he got to define himself Discovering Antonio's secret band lab meant finding a whole new world of people whose lives were changed by his death a world of people who Alongside his dad, we're still waiting for answers about the night he died We already knew a few things from live streams of that night