By Mark Wineka
Salisbury Post
Her grave lies toward the back of Rowan Memorial Park near the lake and a stand of tall pine trees.
On a drizzly December day, water beads on top of the ground-level, bronze marker.Treasure Kiara Symone Feamster
June 6, 1993-March 16, 2007A vase set into the marker holds plastic pink, white and blue flowers.
The two closest graves belong to a man who served in the Navy in World War II and a woman described as “a cherished wife and mother.”
Straw covers some newly planted grass near Treasure’s marker. Geese hanging out by the lake also have left their calling cards.
Near the front of the cemetery, the sounds of traffic on U.S. 601 and car doors slamming at the end of a funeral sift back to this spot.
Otherwise, it’s quiet ó nothing like the night 13-year-old Treasure died or how people in the community spoke loud and clear in the months to follow that she would not be forgotten.
The Salisbury Post has chosen Treasure Feamster as the 2007 Newsmaker of the Year.
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On the night of March 16, Treasure, her cousin Eboni and three other girls went from a friend’s house to a party at the J.C. Price American Legion building on Old Wilkesboro Road.
Many teenagers had learned of the event ó described by some as a birthday party ó through flyers posted around town, including Salisbury High School.
The party had a DJ for music, a $3 cover charge and was supposed to last from 7:45 p.m. to midnight. Treasure and her group arrived about 9:15 p.m and were among close to 200 youth packed into the building for music and dancing.
Trouble surfaced later when shouts of “Eastside” and “Westside” rang out at the party and, fearful that things could escalate, the adults in attendance shut down the music and cleared the building.
Witnesses told the Post later they heard two separate rounds of gunfire outside ó at least 10 shots total ó as people were leaving. Eboni Feamster said she and Treasure started running for cover with others in the parking lot.
Eboni thought Treasure was with her as she and another girl hid next to a trash can.
But Treasure wasn’t there. She lay mortally wounded in the parking lot where an unbelieving crowd was gathering again.
Police said the Knox Middle School eighth-grader had been in the wrong place at the wrong time ó caught in the crossfire of shots between rival gang members.
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A total of nine young men, ranging in age from 16 to 23, were arrested in connection with Treasure’s death. All but one are still waiting trial on charges that include first-degree murder, accessory after the fact and inciting a riot.
Meanwhile, reaction to the young girl’s death swept in waves over Salisbury. The sudden focus on gangs and youth violence drew state and national attention.
“She has come to symbolize what we’re doing and why,” Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz said last week.
Churches, governments, law enforcement, schools, nonprofits, businesses, civic organizations and others asked themselves what they could do to address the gang problem and provide alternative choices for youth.
Led by Kluttz, the city of Salisbury gave them a forum. The city was host for June and November “Gang Summits,” which attracted hundreds of people for each session.
The summits identified eight areas of focus and assigned groups of people and resources to each. “Salisbury-Rowan United” now centers on law enforcement, job opportunities, mentoring, recreation, schools, parental support, community awareness and faith-based initiatives.
Now at almost every Salisbury City Council meeting, the mayor sets time aside to hear about community efforts aimed at helping youth.
“If something positive can come out of a tragedy, it has,” Kluttz said.
At budget time last spring, Salisbury City Council hired two additional full-time police officers to concentrate with Gang Investigator Todd Sides on enforcement and prevention. Community wide, tutoring and mentoring have become buzzwords.
Project SAFE Neighborhoods was host to two “Family Days” at the Hurley Family YMCA. Again, hundreds of people took part in parenting skills, conflict resolution and gang awareness workshops.
The N.C. Metropolitan Coalition, representing the mayors of the state’s largest cities, held a press conference in Salisbury to urge the General Assembly to pass strong, anti-gang legislation.
The New York Times led a September story on gangs with Treasure Feamster’s death. A few weeks later, Salisbury again was in a national spotlight when the same Times reporter wrote a column questioning the tactics of Salisbury Police and how he personally was treated during his reporting in Salisbury one late August night.
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Treasure Feamster had been living with her father, Kenneth Hosch, and his family in Forest Creek, the subdivision of Habitat for Humanity houses off Ryan Street.
She also spent time at her mother Sha Rhonda’s apartment near Salisbury High School.
Her divided family was large. All together, she had five brothers and three sisters, not to mention grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who grieved her passing.
The black-framed glasses that Treasure always wore gave her a distinctive, studious book. Friends said she actually hated to have her picture taken.
An aunt, Lackey Borders, said the girl often talked about being a doctor.
Others described a young teenager who was energetic and happy.
At her funeral, the Rev. Reginald McConneaughey said “her life was snuffed out before she had a chance to enjoy life.”
Had she lived, some family members say, Treasure Feamster simply would be a talkative freshman at Salisbury High School with many friends.
Marquis Feamster, her oldest brother, said she likely would have her nose in a book, and he thinks she could have been a writer.
Carol Hollis, her maternal grandmother, said she realizes that Treasure’s death had an important impact on the community and even helped to bring a divided family together.
“But we still miss her,” Hollis said. “We haven’t really been focused on that. I’m glad good things have happened but I still think ó she’s gone.”
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Mayor Kluttz attended Treasure Feamster’s funeral with fellow council member William “Pete” Kennedy.
She recalled the difficulty she had walking with him toward the base of the stage at Livingstone College’s Varick Auditorium and looking into the open casket.
The girl was propped up and wearing her glasses. Kluttz said she looked so studious, intelligent and young ó “a precious, little child … not a person caught in the middle of a gang shootout.”
Kluttz then turned left to speak with the grieving family on the front row and express sympathy and sorrow on behalf of a whole city. It was one of the most difficult times in her decade as mayor.
The City Council realized quickly that citizens were looking to it for answers.
“The community obviously was so outraged, and nobody really knew what to do,” Kluttz recalled.
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It’s not that gang activity caught city officials or the Police Department by surprise.
A month earlier, at its annual retreat, City Council devoted considerable time to hearing about the problem and making it one of its numerous goals to address in the coming year.
But it was one thing to hear about graffiti, car break-ins and drugs associated with gangs, Kluttz said, and another to see a child being killed by gang members with guns.
The gang issue came to dominate city business and much of the mayor’s time.
Kluttz continues to work on a mayors’ task force that’s lobbying the N.C. Senate to pass the state’s first anti-gang legislation. She has been extremely proud of how Salisbury and Rowan County citizens as a whole have stepped up to counteract the environment many teenagers being recruited by gangs find themselves in.
No supervision, working parents, images in the media, the enticement of guns and money ó all these things combine in helping older gang members land new recruits. Kluttz said someone else must actively recruit these same vulnerable children with better alternatives.
If she had a wish for 2008 and beyond, Kluttz said, it would be that every child had reason to have hope for the future and that gangs and gang violence would end. She also would hope that every adult resolved in 2008 to back a child.
That support, she said, could come from mentoring, providing a job, getting kids involved in a project and more.
“We have just an incredible community,” Kluttz said, “and we’ve seen that in the past year.”
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Salisbury Police had initiated a grant-funded gang awareness program before Treasure Feamster’s death and were actively working from an intelligence point of view in trying to identify and document gangs and gang members.
Also, Chris Boylan, as an assistant principal at Salisbury High School, had started a Nine-Up program that was trying to identify certain middle-schoolers before they reached high school to give them some of the coping skills they would need to resist gangs.
But Treasure Feamster’s death moved the gang issue to an even higher priority and gave police a new, interested partner ó the community.
“You sure don’t want to go bury a kid,” Chief Deputy Steve Whitley said. “It was truly a wake-up call.”
Whitley said people and resources came out of the woodwork.
“People are really, honest to God, committed to making a difference,” he said.
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Whitley remembers working the crime scene the first 24 hours after Treasure Feamster’s death and sensing that a whole community’s heart was breaking.
“You could feel it,” he said. “It was a defining moment in getting people to say this is a real problem.”
Beyond increased enforcement and intelligence activities, the Police Department’s own emphasis has reached into the schools.
“We give them an inoculation for lack of a better word,” Whitley said of the presentations police officers make to fourth- and fifth-graders, then again in middle school.
The department often targets kids whose older siblings already are gang members.
“We give it to them pretty straight and hard,” Whitley said. “The truth is they know more about it than we do.”
Whitley said it’s hard to remember that many of the kids in gangs are juveniles, for whom the law is more redemptive than punishing in nature. Adult criminals recognize this and see a great business value in recruiting juveniles into gangs to do their dirty work.
The adults wave money under their noses, give them free food and offer some structure they don’t have at home, and it’s difficult for a child with minimal coping skills to resist, Whitley said.
“We’re trying to play catchup and find ways to get through to them,” he acknowledged.
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Life goes on.
The house where Treasure Feamster had been living is vacant and for sale. Her father’s family has moved to another home in Salisbury. Her mother also has changed addresses.
At Treasure Feamster’s funeral, the Rev. Reginald McConneaughey asked young people in the audience to walk to the front of the college auditorium and give their lives to Christ, not Satan.
“If you’re in a gang here, throw your bandannas down, throw your guns down and pick up the word of God,” the pastor said.
Young people moved to the front of the auditorium, sang a closing hymn and hugged, cried and joined hands near the fallen girl’s casket.
Today, at Rowan Memorial Park, a solar-powered cross is stuck within the plastic flowers at Treasure Feamster’s grave. It saves up the day’s energy to provide a faint light during the night.
For a community, however, the light is a beacon ó “a precious little girl” showing the way.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or mwineka@salisburypost.com.