profile
Uploaded by asemkesee on Mar 11, 2012
In one of the Maple wood condominium apartments lives Edmond E.
Ashie, a 28 year old young man, who has been in prison for nine years for
shooting. He has a very large living room decorated with brown colored leather
furniture with fifty inches screen television, matched with blue carpet and a very
large dinning set.
Thirty minutes on a dark December night in 1996 left Edmond .E. Ashie
irrevocably changed. It was the first time Edmond, known as a smart, straight-edge and
funny guy, had ever held a gun. The pistol fit snugly into the hands of the 16-year-old,
who tapped gently on the window of a dark green Pontiac Grand Prix. The noise startled
the middle-aged man sleeping in the car.
In just 30 minutes, Edmond committed his first crimes, an armed robbery and
Car high jacking .They were felonies that landed the teenager in Boston’s adult prisons
for nearly nine years. "I've seen documentaries on prison, and I can name movies and
books about prison, I don't think any of them actually capture the sound of a cell door
losing and realizing you can't go home," Said Edmond .What Edmond did behind bars
and when the cell door finally opened nine years later is a remarkable story. Tattooed
with a violent felony record, he nonetheless attended the Boston college and did so well
that he was chosen as the commencement speaker in May 2011.
How did he achieve near-perfect grades and win a scholarship for a full ride to
graduate school?.Some might say the odds were stacked against Edmond. He was the
son of a convicted felon, raised by a single mother. Drug deals and robberies were
commonplace in his Suitland, Boston neighborhood. "I didn't really have any outlets, "he
explained. He appears very different today, dressed in a sharp black suit than as he
was a streetwise teenager. He became one of hundreds of thousands of teens who
were in the U.S. juvenile justice system. Of the offenders, federal studies show a large
percentage of the offenders are black. Earlier on, his defense attorney made it known
that the seriousness of his crime would probably place him in the adult prison system,
even though no one was hurt in the robbery. But Edmond wasn't the only juvenile
locked up with adults.
...