On New Year's Eve morning, Albert Collins took his 9-year-old daughter, Mariah, to pick out a treat at a candy house in the Sunnydale public housing project.
It was a fatal errand.
For years, candy houses have been makeshift havens in crime-plagued neighborhoods where residents sell and buy candy and other items in safety - rather than venture to liquor-dealing corner stores that are often magnets for trouble.
Collins, 30, had recently gotten a job through Goodwill Industries and was staying with his mother at the Sunnydale public housing project in San Francisco's Visitacion Valley. By all accounts, he was trying to make a better life for himself, his daughter and his 13-year-old son, Albert Jr., whom he took custody of after the boy's mother had recently been jailed in Oakland.
But he didn't get the chance.
As Collins stopped on the way to the candy house to talk to friends - two brothers who lived in the neighborhood - they were hit with gunfire at 11:40 a.m.
Collins' last act was to throw his body over the top of his daughter to shield her from the barrage that would leave him dead, his daughter with a graze wound and two brothers injured.
"He turned and sensed something was happening and grabbed her," said Inspector Michael Gaynor of the San Francisco police homicide detail. "At some point, he saw the guy with the gun - that was when he grabbed her."
With that, Collins became the last of the city's 98 homicides in 2007, the highest yearly death toll in more than a decade. According to police, he may have been an innocent victim in a gang-related shooting, by gang members firing at rivals nearby.
Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration has struggled to develop a strategy to stem the bloodshed. The mayor has pushed for installing more crime monitoring cameras in and around housing projects, beefing up police foot patrols and enhancing community policing. But those efforts failed to spare Collins, an apparent bystander felled in broad daylight.
"They killed my son as he was getting ready to get his apartment and take care of his kids," said Alberta Nash, who raised Collins as a single mother. "A lot of people, they loved him."
Striving for better
Collins grew up in the housing projects across town from where he died, in the Western Addition. Baptized at age 5, he finished his education by graduating from Galileo High School and went to church until he was an adult.
"Everybody told me: You have a sweet son, you have a nice son, a respectable son, with good manners," Nash said. "I raised him myself, on my own."
She said her son wasn't into gangs that were all around him in the city's public housing projects.
"He wasn't involved in any of that," Nash said. "I raised him better than that. He was a happy person."
Collins' life hadn't been trouble-free, though.
He had bouts of alcohol abuse and picked up misdemeanor convictions for disturbing the peace and domestic violence.
Still, he held odd jobs in security and janitorial work. He staffed concession stands at Giants games. More recently, he had talked more about building a future and raising his family - and sought job-training through Goodwill.
By early 2007, he was working as a driver's assistant with the nonprofit social service group.
Kevin Newman, transportation manager with Goodwill, said Collins was a dedicated, well-liked employee who was on the road during the day, helping pick up donations and computers for recycling.
"He was extremely upbeat, always had a smile on his face, and he made friends with everyone he worked with," Newman said.
On Dec. 6, Collins started a janitorial position with North & South Market Adult Day Health center.
"He wanted to get some skills, and get his life back in order," said Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez, Goodwill's San Francisco CEO and president. "We work with people who have the desire to change. He had that, he clearly had that."
She said the organization has lost six people working in its programs in the last two years to violence in the city, including Dewayne Larry, 24, who was slain Dec. 17 on Kiska Road in the Bayview. Larry was the 97th homicide victim in 2007. No arrests have been made in the case, or in Collins' slaying.
"It happens a lot - they are getting caught in the crossfire in a lot of violence out there," Alvarez-Rodriguez said.
Last homicide of 2007
During the New Year's weekend, Collins was staying with his mother, who lived on Blythedale Avenue at the Sunnydale projects. The sprawling complex in the southeast corner of the city in Visitacion Valley is plagued by gang clashes between the Up the Hill and Down the Hill gangs.
Inspector Gaynor said the targets of the shooting that morning appeared to be associates of Down the Hill, but not full-fledged members.
Nash said her son came up to her room that New Year's Eve morning to tell her he was going to the store.
"He came upstairs to see what I was doing. He said, 'Hi Baya' - that is the name he gave me, Baya, those were his first words. I asked him, 'Where you going?' 'I'm going to the candy house.' "
Pam-Pam Gaddies, a neighborhood activist in Sunnydale, decried the wanton violence of her neighborhood.
"Here it is, a man can't even walk to get some candy for his child," Gaddies said. "When the men who want to protect their women and children die, what do other women have to look forward to?"
Soon after Collins left, Nash heard gunfire.
"I heard the shot, and I called him on his phone," Nash said, but got only his voice mail. "I said, 'Albert, you're not answering the phone. I want to see if you are all right.' He never did answer the phone. He was on top of her, saving her."
After the gunfire, Mariah went for help at her great-aunt's place nearby, where family members had sought cover from the flying bullets. The family soon learned Collins was shot, but at first thought the wound was minor.
A cousin held Collins' head. Nash said she watched helplessly, as her son made what would be his final requests. "He told his sister to look out for his son and his daughter."
"I'm scared," he kept saying.
"He was laying there, coughing up blood," said his sister, 17-year-old Nichelle Fulbright. "I thought he was going to be all right. Because he was talking and stuff."
She remembered that medics asked Collins to do something at the scene.
"I can't because I'm gonna die," Collins replied.
Unable to ride in the ambulance, Nash followed her son to San Francisco General Hospital. But there was nothing the doctors could do. Collins died of a chest wound.
"He was good - he never hurt nobody," Fulbright said. "He would do anything for anybody."
Collins will be remembered Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Duggan's Funeral Service at 17th and Valencia streets.
News Source : World News
