When he was 14, Bobby Ingram would ride his bike to the corner store, a $5 bill stuffed in his pocket for soda and snacks.
He soon noticed that other kids had a lot more money than he did.
“We would go to the store and I would pull out the $5 my mom had gave me, and they would have hundreds and hundreds, ” Ingram said. “At 14, that was a lot of money.”
About that time, Ingram decided what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I wanted to be a drug dealer,” Ingram said. “That was my profession. That was what I wanted to be good at.”
Ingram didn’t waste any time pursuing his goal.
He sold drugs for the first time at 14, acquired his first gun at 15, served time for drug dealing in a juvenile reformatory at 16 and killed a man at 17.
Ingram is 18 now. He is serving a life sentence at the Southampton Correctional Center for first-degree murder.
His story, told during a recent interview in the prison’s visiting room, is the same as many of the 15 other Roanoke teens who have been either murder defendants or victims since 1990.
Most of them grew up in low-income neighborhoods. Most came from single-parent homes. Most dropped out of school early.
Most had little money until they discovered how to make lots of it, in a way that authorities say has become an accepted part of life in some parts of inner-city Roanoke.
From 1990 to 1992, the annual number of Roanoke juveniles charged with drug dealing doubled from 39 to 78, according to state police statistics. Last year’s total was back down to 36, but authorities say the city has no shortage of kids like Ingram.
“It’s very frightening and it’s very sad, ” Regional Drug Prosecutor Alice Ekirch said, “to think that these people are the adults of our tomorrow.”
`It was exciting’
Bobby Ingram looks older than 18, his face hardened by street crime and prison time. He couldn’t help but smile, though, when reflecting on one of his childhood memories:
His very first drug deal.
Ingram was 14 and nervous about selling a small amount of marijuana, even though the customer was a friend of a friend.
“I was scared, ” Ingram said. “My cousin, he was nudging me, saying `Go ahead; Do it.’ Afterwards, I said, `That was easy.’ Then I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Ingram became a drug dealer that day in 1990, but it didn’t happen overnight.
For as long as he can remember, drug dealers in his neighborhood were as much a fixture as the fire hydrants on the corners of Melrose.
“Living on Melrose, it was out there, ” Ingram said. “I would ride my bike to Caru [Apartments], and I would see the kind of money that was out there.”
Sometimes, Ingram didn’t even have to leave the house where he grew up with a younger brother and three sisters.
“My mother, she went with a drug dealer once, and I could see the people he hung out with, ” he said. “She tried to talk to me, but she knew it wouldn’t help.”
Ingram did not go out of his way to get involved in drug dealing. He just did not go out of his way to avoid it.
He sold marijuana for half a year, then moved up to crack cocaine. “Because it was more money, ” he said. “One hundred dollars a night. That really kept me interested.”
When he was 15, Ingram’s supplier gave him his first of nearly 10 guns, a .25-caliber revolver.
“That just enhanced the moment, ” Ingram said. “I felt like I was little bit taller. That’s when I got fascinated with it. I would go to the park when I had a gun on me, and I would feel bigger.
“It was time for me to express myself.”
Business was good on Melrose, and it wasn’t long before Ingram had saved enough to buy his first $1,000 “block” of crack and go into business for himself. By the time he was 16, Ingram was bringing in $500 on a good night.
With the money came more power than most teen-agers dream of.
“For that little piece of crack, I could tell a grown person to shut up and they would, ” Ingram said. “I could tell them to do anything. I could control them.”
Ingram remembers an addict who showed up one night with a black-and-white television to trade for crack. Ingram said he wanted a color TV.
The addict led Ingram to his home, not far away, and went straight into his living room, where his wife and children were watching TV on a color set. He yanked the cord from the outlet and gave the TV to Ingram.
Other addicts desperate for a fix would let Ingram drive their cars around town as he and his friends lived it up – getting drunk, going to the mall, catching a movie or just hanging out on Melrose.
“Then along with drugs came the girls, cars, motel rooms and everything else, ” Ingram said. “That’s when I really knew I didn’t want to stop.
“My cousins never had any problems getting girls. I guess they would be the girls’ type. I always wanted to get a girl. . . . That’s one reason why I started selling drugs heavy.”
Although he liked a strong drink, Ingram never touched the poison he sold. He knew better, just from seeing the people who got hooked and kept coming back.
“They would come up there looking like they just got hit by a car, sweating, wearing dirty clothes that looked like they had been wearing for weeks, ” he said.
Northwest Roanoke is the only place in town with open-air crack markets, but the customers came from all over.
“Southwest Roanoke, Southeast Roanoke; most of my money came from white guys, ” Ingram said. “I got to know four white guys who would spend $1,000 a day. On Fridays, they would bring half their paychecks.”
Ingram accommodated most people, but he drew the line in one case.
That was when a pregnant woman showed up on Melrose, pushing a baby in a stroller. She wanted to trade food stamps for crack. Ingram wouldn’t do it, he said, but another dealer down the street did.
Ingram smiled, again, when he remembered the first time he shot at someone.
It was outside a Melrose Avenue bar, late at night. A passing carload of people yelled racial slurs at Ingram and his friends as they stood on the sidewalk.
They answered the words with bullets, spraying wild, reckless shots in the general direction of the car as it sped away.
“It was exciting, ” Ingram said. “It’s like shooting at a cat. Whether you hit it or not, it’s just to be shooting at it.”
Ingram still remembers the panic on their faces, and the surge of adrenalin it gave him.
“I felt their weakness, ” he said, “and it gave me strength.”
`Coyner Springs was easy’
Ingram learned his first lesson about the juvenile justice system when he was 12, after he was charged with assault in a fight with neighborhood kids.
A judge in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court took the charges under advisement and dismissed them after 60 days.
Later, when he began to sell drugs, Ingram remembered his initial experience with a system that stresses rehabilitating juveniles over incarcerating them.
“At that age, I wasn’t really thinking about time. You aren’t going to get much time, ” he said. “The way that I was thinking was, `I’m not but 15. At 18 I’ll stop, because then I’ll get some time.’ ”
Ingram racked up more charges – another assault, petty larceny, rape – that led to probation, suspended sentences and counseling.
In 1991, when Ingram was 15, he was charged for the first time with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. He was placed on probation.
“It really didn’t affect me, ” he said. “Coyner Springs [Juvenile Detention Home] was easy. I didn’t stay there but one night, so I didn’t get a chance to fear it. I came out the next day, went to court and came home.”
Half a year later, Ingram was arrested a second time for dealing crack. He was sent to the Hanover Learning Center, where he stayed for six months.
“That six months went like a week, ” Ingram said. “All I would do is eat, sleep and call home. Plus I had friends from Roanoke there, and that made it easier. All them, they welcomed me. They said, `Hey, Bobby; what’s up?’ ”
That December, Ingram was given a 10-day furlough to spend Christmas with his family. He spent much of the time back on the streets, selling drugs. By the time he went back to Hanover, he’d made $600.
“I was happy the rest of the time back at Hanover because I knew I would get out and have that money waiting for me, ” Ingram said.
Ingram was released on Jan. 24, 1992. He was 16, a mature criminal in the eyes of those who believe the system already had failed to stop him.
“It seems to me what you’ve got is an individual who is becoming progressively more violent and antisocial, ” said Lt. J.E. Dean, head of the Roanoke Police Department’s youth bureau.
“What did the juvenile justice system do to try to prevent this?” Dean asked. “What is the system doing for these kids, except for encouraging them?”
Ingram stayed out of trouble for 10 months. Then, in October 1992, he was charged with his third offense of selling crack. He was 17 then, and a judge ordered that he be tried as an adult in Roanoke Circuit Court.
But Ingram was allowed to remain free on bond. Two days before that case went to trial, he was in far more serious trouble. He was facing the electric chair, on a charge of capital murder.
`Point-blank, cold murder’
It was close to sunrise on Nov. 8, 1992, when Steven Wikle and two friends piled in a Ford Bronco and drove to Melrose Avenue looking for crack.
They had been up most of that Saturday night; Ingram said he was home in bed.
But he had decided to hit the streets about 2 a.m., knowing he was due in court the following Tuesday to answer to his most recent drug charge.
Ingram remembered telling himself: “I’m going to have to get out there and have some fun, before I get sent off.”
Several hours later, Ingram was drinking a gin and orange juice in a “nip joint, ” an unlicensed bar where his age was not questioned, when someone told him he had a sale waiting outside.
“I thought I was just going to sell one rock, ” Ingram said. “If I got caught I would get maybe five years. I never thought one rock would get me life.”
Ingram walked outdoors.
He and a friend approached Wikle’s Bronco and started to negotiate. It was to be a trade, an even swap of a bag of marijuana for a $20 rock stashed in Ingram’s sock.
Wikle asked to inspect the merchandise, Ingram said, and he handed him the rock.
“He looked at me and smiled, kind of like `f— you, ‘ ” and started to drive away, Ingram said.
Ingram described what happened next as a spontaneous impulse. “It was a reaction, ” he said. “If he had gotten out of the truck, I would have been happy to fight him.”
Instead, he shot Wikle in the head.
Eric Swartz, a friend of Wikle’s who was in the Bronco, would later testify in court that the shooting was unprovoked – “just point-blank, cold murder.”
Ingram remembers it differently.
“I wasn’t trying to shoot the person, I was shooting at them. I had shot at cars before, but hadn’t hit anybody. I thought it would be one more time like that.”
He compared it to throwing a brick or a bottle through the window of an occupied car – no one gets killed, but the message gets across.
And Wikle had a good scare coming, Ingram figured.
“I came over there to do an honest trade, and he turned it bad; he broke the rules, ” Ingram said. “We have rules in the street just like they have rules in the law, and rule No. 1 is you don’t take from anybody.”
The bullet hit Wikle just behind his left ear.
The Bronco lurched forward and crashed into a parked car. Ingram remembers throwing his gun into some bushes and running through an alley, shouting, “God; why me? God; why me?”
Several days later, he was arrested and charged with capital murder, the first time Roanoke officials had used a new law that made a drug-related killing punishable by death.
In an agreement with prosecutors, Ingram pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of first-degree murder. Judge Clifford Weckstein sentenced him to life in prison plus two years.
Ingram went to prison without ever saying he was sorry.
“How can I show remorse for somebody I never knew?” he said. “I didn’t know that man from yesterday.
“I’m sorry a man is dead over $20, but I can’t really say I’m sick and sad over it. . . . I can’t say I’m sorry for a man I never knew.”
While making no excuses for himself –“I did it, I can’t deny it, and I have to suffer the consequences” –Ingram does not see his victim as totally blameless.
“They put it on me like I was the devil,” he said. “But he was an adult; and it was his risk to come out there at 5 in the morning, when that corner was full of black people, carrying guns and selling drugs.
“Most of the time I would be thinking, `These people are crazy for coming out here.’ ”
Maybe Wikle should not have been on Melrose that morning, prosecutors said, but that was no excuse to kill him.
Wikle’s mother, Mary, says the circumstances of his death have unfairly tainted the way he lived. Wikle was a college graduate who worked as an X-ray technician, she said, but he got caught up in a weekend drug habit to cope with a failed marriage.
The Wikles never will believe their son tried to steal drugs, as Ingram claims.
“He was a good person and he would have done anything in the world for anyone, ” Mary Wikle said.
Although Wikle paid with his life for one night on Melrose, Ingram was there every day, dealing drugs with impunity.
“I think that something should have been done with him long before this happened, ” Mary Wikle said.
Dean agrees. “It took him finally killing somebody before they decided to remove him from the streets,” he said.
“The truth and reality is that we’re not going to save the world. There are some kids who can be helped, but people like this have shown they are career criminals, and they need to be removed from society.”
Many of them have been, at least temporarily. Since 1987, when crack infiltrated Roanoke and the nature of juvenile crime turned more violent, capacity at Coyner Springs has gone from 69 percent to a projected 140 percent this year.
Mark Johnson, director of the facility, said there isn’t enough room to lock up every potential menace to society.
“When you’ve got a limited amount of bed space, there are hard decisions to be made, ” he said.
“Unfortunately, we talk tough and yet we know there’s no space in the jails and juvenile detention centers to get tough, ” Johnson said. “So who’s fooling who?”
Johnson believes there should be more emphasis on crime-prevention programsthat reach kids before they wind up in trouble.
While legislators talked tough on crime this year — proposing to abolish parole and lowering the age to 14 at which a juvenile can be tried as an adult — state funding for some preventative efforts, such at Roanoke’s Office on Youth, was nearly eliminated.
`It’s not worth it’
Ingram celebrated his 18th birthday in prison last Sept. 18. He will have to wait for at least 12 more Septembers before becoming eligible for parole in 2005.
Parole is seldom granted the first time for violent offenders, so Ingram could be well into his 30s before he gets out.
One year in prison does not seem to have changed Ingram much from the teen-ager who was sentenced in Weckstein’s courtroom last April.
During a two-hour interview, Ingram seemed at times to be reliving his old life, telling of his criminal exploits like a high school friend reminiscing at a class reunion.
He never said he was sorry for Steven Wikle, nor did he condemn the drug trade that took Wikle’s life, and, in a sense, his own.
Only when he pondered the long years ahead did Ingram acknowledge the error of his ways.
“The time wears on you, ” he said. “Whether you’re 16, 18 or any age. Doing life; it’s just not worth it.”