The Buffalo News, Inc. - June 12, 2005

THE DAMAGE DONE
TWO BUFFALO LIVES INTERTWINE AS A GUN TRAFFICKER'S SCHEME SHOOTS DOWN A YOUNG ATHLETE'S DREAMS

By SUSAN SCHULMAN, LOU MICHEL and DAN HERBECK, News Staff Reporters

Daniel Williams was just a year old when James Nigel Bostic plowed through opposing linebackers while playing for South Park High School, destined for a college football scholarship.

Williams grew up to become a top basketball player himself at McKinley High School, also destined for a big-name college team.

If only Bostic had lived his dream, perhaps Williams would have gotten a shot at his.

But it wasn't to be.

Instead, Bostic became a local symbol of everything wrong with the nation's handgun laws.

Williams became a symbol of gun violence. A bullet from one of Bostic's guns ripped through Bud's stomach while the teenager was shooting baskets near his home one night.

"Daddy, I don't think I'm going to make it," the 16-year-old told his father, who cradled him in his arms.

"You will make it," Eddie Williams promised before getting into the ambulance taking his youngest son to the hospital.

Bostic didn't pull the trigger that night in August 2003 when the 9mm bullet tore a hole through Bud's insides and his dreams.

Bostic never pulls the trigger. That's not how he kills or maims people, or destroys their lives.

But Bud still was one of Bostic's victims.

So was Armod Law. And Christopher Leftwich. And Larry Sommerville, even though Sommerville killed himself.

They were all Bostic's victims. And there are more. Many more.

Bostic put enough weapons on Buffalo's streets during 2000 to arm a company of military police: Roughly 250 handguns. Forty-five caliber pistols designed to knock down the strongest men. Nine-millimeter Hi-Points, light and easily concealed.

But he didn't give these weapons to military police. Bostic put his arsenal in the hands of doped up teenagers, petty thieves and hard core drug dealers. Anyone who wanted a cheap handgun for whatever reason - protection, status, to settle a grudge.

Bostic, now 34, carried out the biggest illegal gun trafficking scheme ever uncovered in Western New York, The News found, by taking advantage of loopholes in the nation's gun laws and limitations on federal law enforcement. And he was helped by powerful gun rights lobbies that undermined the enforcers.

Bostic also benefited, The News found, from hatching his scheme in the gun-friendly state of Ohio - where he and three girlfriends roamed through gun shows, seeking weapons dealers willing to turn a blind eye to make a buck.

In the end, Bostic and his local accomplices probably pocketed about $50,000 on the gun trafficking scheme.

The community paid a much higher price. The weapons wielded by Bostic's customers killed and injured men, women - even children - in robberies and drug deals and drive-by shootings. Some were used to threaten and shoot at police officers. Most of the guns turned up in Buffalo, but some were found in Niagara Falls, the Town of Tonawanda, Rochester and New York City.

Some of the victims were criminals. Others were innocent people, like Bud, who was just shooting hoops on his street when he was shot. The gunman mistook him for someone else.

Bud eventually recovered from the gunshot. But he may never be the same.

And the law eventually caught up with Bostic. He's behind bars now.

The young man who shot Bud is also locked up.

But Bostic's deadly legacy lives on.

Of the almost 250 handguns Bostic sold in Buffalo, police still can't account for some 150.

"Bostic's crime is still ongoing. . . . The guns are still being recovered. And the effects of his crime won't be gone until every one of those guns is off the street," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel L. Violanti.

"You're going to have guns showing up for the next 15 years," added Sonny Songer, a detective with the Fairborn, Ohio, Police Department, who was involved in the case.

Blowing his chances

Bostic's South Park High School football team won the citywide Harvard Cup in 1988 for the first time in more than three decades, and Bostic was the reason. With the game on his resume, the 6-foot-2 running back was headed for bigger places. He played a couple years at the junior college level, then won a football scholarship to Oklahoma State University where he hoped to follow in the footsteps of OSU greats Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders.

But before playing even a single game with OSU, Bostic was caught in the winter of 1992 smuggling 69 grams of cocaine into Buffalo Niagara International Airport, federal agents said. The charges were later dropped on a technicality, but by then Oklahoma State wanted nothing to do with Bostic.

So the former South Park football great bounced from one school to another, landing in Ohio and taking classes at Wright State University and Central State University in the Dayton area.

He lived in a two-story brick apartment in Fairborn, Ohio, next door to Scherie Smith, a 19-year-old college student with a smile that illuminated her beautiful face.

"I've been telling my friends, "Someday I am going to marry you,' " Bostic told Smith when he first walked up to her on campus.

Smith was swept away, especially as Bostic courted her with false tales of a football career with the Philadelphia Eagles.

The couple fell in love. And while they didn't marry, they had two children.

But Bostic - unknown to Smith - had other girlfriends. There were also DiAnna Peterson and Kimberly Upshaw.

Bostic persuaded all three women to go into business with him. He wanted to open a gun shop; maybe two, one in Ohio and the other in Buffalo, he told them.

"He started talking about how much money we could make if we opened up a gun shop," Smith said. "We were struggling with bills and the new baby, and he made it seem like an easy business to open."

Ohio's license to buy

If Bostic had been in New York, with its tough handgun laws, his scheme would have failed, authorities say. New York requires an extensive background check and waiting period for a required pistol permit.

In fact, given his criminal record - he had 17 aliases, two Social Security numbers and 23 prior arrests with 11 convictions - it's unlikely Bostic could legally own even one handgun in New York State.

But he was in Ohio, where buying box loads of handguns was easier than getting a credit card.

In that gun-friendly state, there are no licenses or waiting periods required to buy handguns.

There are no limits on the number of guns that can be bought at one time and no background investigation beyond a routine criminal check to weed out convicted felons. Despite his many troubles with the law, Bostic had not been convicted of a felony at the time.

So Bostic and his three girlfriends in 2000 traipsed into the welcoming world of Ohio gun shows. They easily bought about 250 handguns.

Bostic bought some of the guns, but most were in his girlfriends' names. The majority were 9mm Hi-Points selling for $89. Some were .40 and .45 caliber guns, costing a little more. All were purchased from two gun dealers on the pretext that Bostic would one day open a gun shop.

The dealers went along with Bostic's story.

But in time, Smith realized the talk of a gun shop was a lie. Especially when she noticed Bostic suddenly flush with cash.

"He put a television in (his SUV) and a sound system. He souped it up. I don't know how much money he had, but I do know he didn't give me any," she said. "Maybe he was tricking it off on other girls. My car was junk, and he let it be junk."

Finding a market

The guns, meanwhile, started showing up in Buffalo.

Bostic traveled back home, visiting his sister Cloteia "Poopey" Taylor's Floss Avenue apartment, off East Delavan Avenue. That's where he sold the guns, often with help from Taylor's boyfriend, DeShawn "Big D" McLorn.

"We felt we could make a couple bucks," McLorn said.

Bostic shared some profits with McLorn, who said one handgun would bring in as much as $300, a profit of about $200.

"We'd have fun," McLorn said. "We'd go shopping and to hotels with girls."

McLorn estimated he and Bostic sold about 100 guns, but added Bostic also dealt with other people.

Brett "Brat" Page was in the sales network, too.

"I can get some guns," Bostic told Page.

"Bring some back, and I'll check them out,"

Page told Bostic. Page bought five guns, and kept two. He was a drug dealer at the time and needed them for protection, he said.

He sold the other three guns on the street for $850.

"I wasn't telling anyone I had the guns, but the word got out," Page said. "It was in the air . . . The people I sold to were pretty cool. They weren't violent types. Probably they wanted them for personal protection."

But the violence had begun.

McLorn himself was shot in the face in July 2001. Authorities believe it was a Bostic gun.

As two of McLorn's friends argued, bullets started flying. One hit McLorn. A fragment of the bullet remains in his jaw.

Months later, Armod Law, 28, pulled into his driveway on a motorcycle. Two men hiding beside the house shot him with a Bostic gun. Law said there was a contract out on his life because of a soured drug deal.

"If I hadn't been wearing the helmet I'd be dead," Law said. "I'm blind in my left eye."

Not long after that, in May 2001, Larry Sommerville, 20, fatally shot himself in the head with a Bostic gun while on Glenny Drive. Two pictures of a woman were found next to him.

And earlier this year, Christopher Leftwich was knocked in the head with a Bostic gun and robbed while walking to his Niagara Falls apartment.

"I fell into the snow, and when I looked up, there were four guys around me beating me up," Leftwich said. "They stole my gold necklace. It was worth $1,500."

A Bostic gun, authorities say, also was used to shoot Daniel Williams.

Wrong place, wrong person

Williams was getting ready for his junior year at McKinley High school, where he was a good student and, at 6-foot-2, a standout basketball player.

"He had a great freshman year, he had a great sophomore year," said his coach, James Daye. "He could have been one of the best point guards in Western New York."

But what happened Saturday, Aug. 16, 2003, changed Bud's future.

Williams returned home from the movies at about 10:30 p.m., and rather than going inside his Girard Place house with his dad, decided to shoot some baskets at the portable hoop in the middle of the block.

One of his shots bounced into a neighbor's yard. Bud picked up the basketball and was about to cross the street when a red Volkswagen Jetta stopped in front of him.

The front seat passenger - Bud didn't recognize him - climbed over the driver and stuck his hand out the window. He pointed a gun at Bud, then fired.

A pain pierced Bud's stomach. He remembers falling to the ground, and crawling.

He remembers a nurse who lives on the street - he doesn't know her name - who stopped the bleeding with a piece of his clothing. He believes the woman saved his life.

He also remembers his parents, Eddie and Michele, at his side.

"My dad was holding me up the whole time. He put my head on his lap, saying I can make it."

But Bud thought he was dying. "I just closed my eyes and laid there," he recalled. "I didn't want to die awake."

Within minutes of the attack, Officers Mark Costantino and Melissa Perez spotted the shooter's car on Dodge Street.

Costantino flipped on the cruiser's overhead lights and siren, but instead of pulling over, the car sped off, then suddenly stopped. Cornell Caldwell, a known gang member, bailed out the driver's side door, Costantino said.

Police ran after Caldwell and caught the 18-year-old on nearby Timon Street.

"The kids from Mortimer were involved with a gang war with the kids from Fillmore, Riley and Girard. The whole summer they were shooting back and forth over drugs," Costantino said. "This kid (Williams) had nothing to do with any of them. It was a mistake of identity. They thought this kid was someone else."

As Caldwell was arrested, and Williams was wheeled into an ambulance, Perez found a 9mm Hi-Point handgun on the floor of the Volkswagen. It was one of the guns Bostic sold in Buffalo.

Caldwell declined an interview, but his mother confirmed his gang involvement. "I guess it was the neighborhood and the people he grew up with, the gangs," Cornelia Caldwell said.

Red flags go up

By the time Bud was shot, Bostic's gun scheme was three years old and he was already charged with gun running.

Authorities became suspicious shortly after the Hi-Points first appeared up on the streets.

"The police were finding them on people who used them in homicides," Scherie Smith said. "He (Bostic) told me something might happen."

In addition, red flags went up at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when the agency was notified of the guns Bostic and the women bought in Ohio. Under federal law, dealers must inform the ATF when anyone purchases more than two guns in a five-day period.

"We knew something was amiss," ATF agent Robert Wilson said.

Bostic thought he could insulate himself by reporting the weapons stolen.

His strategy boomeranged.

He had used his girlfriends as straw buyers to distance himself from many of the purchases, but now, with his name on a burglary report, Bostic was linked to most of the guns.

In August 2002, Bostic was arrested. In 2004, he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

Two of the straw buyers - Smith and Kimberly Upshaw - were also arrested and sentenced to probation. The third - DiAnna Peterson - was not charged because of her early cooperation with police. McLorn and Page now face gun trafficking-related charges.

Better, but not the same

Bud Williams spent months recovering.

The bullet didn't hit any vital organs, but it took 22 staples to close the wound. When Bud was released from the hospital, he could barely walk.

"If I put too much pressure on, my leg was like a wet noodle," he said.

Doctors said Bud wouldn't be able to play basketball when school resumed in the fall of 2003.

"But I made myself play anyway," he said. "I went to rehab two or three days a week for a month and a half."

By late-November of his junior year, Bud was back on the court - struggling, but determined.

He made steady progress, and by his senior year, helped his team, the McKinley Macks, reach the playoffs.

"He had great stats this year," Daye said. "He had a good year."

But Bud's continuing recovery comes too late for his dream of playing for a top college basketball team in the fall of 2005.

He didn't get any hoped-for scholarship offers from Division I or even Division II teams, so he is considering offers to play for Buffalo State College or Genesee Community College. He'll also be studying to become a physical education teacher.

"He had the potential to be a Division I player, but the accident set him back," Daye said. "It's a shame." Still, Bud says he has moved beyond the shooting.

"I really don't think about it anymore," he said.

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