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Before he could say "mama" or "daddy," both of his were gone. [
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His father went to prison for murder. His mother just left.
A decade later, bullies hit him and took his money at school.
He'd miss the bus on purpose, trying in vain to escape.
At 12, Tre'Juan Figures hanged himself in his bedroom.
Fingers are pointing all over Anniston three weeks later, as people try to figure out this tragedy, try to figure out who failed Tre'Juan.
Clearly, they say, somebody did.
"Always in his life"
Tre'Juan, who went by Trey, couldn't always build forts or ride bikes or play basketball in his west Anniston neighborhood on Saturdays.
At least one weekend a month until he was 11, Trey and his grandmother, Essie Figures, went to prison.
"I made sure Trey knew his daddy," said Trey's grandmother, who raised him. "Trey could go in and see Johnny, and he'd hold him and play with him. He loved it."
Trey's father, Johnny Figures, spent 10 years behind bars in different Alabama prisons. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to fatally shooting a Gadsden man in 1995.
He doesn't like talking about the killing, but Johnny says he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he pleaded guilty only to receive a lesser sentence. Prosecutors were trying to put him away for life, he said.
"I may have gotten locked up, but I saw Trey grow up," Johnny said. "I was always in his life."
Photos of Trey and Johnny over the years show the father in prison garb, a number stamped on the chest of his uniform. The grinning son grows from an infant to a young man in photos snapped between thick walls and razor wire.
Trey knew why his father couldn't go back home with him after the visits. He knew his dad sat in prison for killing a man, Johnny said. But he doesn't think those facts hurt Trey. His son understood, Johnny said.
"It don't matter where I lived," he said. "Trey knew I loved him."
Trey mailed his father all kinds of things while he was behind bars — cards with childish writing, colorful drawings of himself and letters. One reads, "I got a new suit for Easter. I will ask my mommy to take some pictures for you."
But by "mommy," Trey meant his grandmother, not his biological mother, Veronica McGee.
"I'm the only mama he knew," said Essie Figures, who earns a living caring for an elderly woman. "When Johnny got in trouble, Veronica left Trey with me. She said she'd come back, but she never did."
So Essie raised Trey, relying sometimes on friends and her church family to help out with diapers, Christmas presents or back-to-school shoes.
McGee said she left Trey with her mother-in-law because she had four other children to care for. Their fathers weren't around, either, she said.
"His grandmamma did keep Trey, but he was still my baby," McGee said. "I saw him whenever I wanted to."
Only that wasn't very often, Essie said. She said McGee didn't acknowledge Trey's birthdays; she didn't celebrate Christmas with him; she didn't pay child support.
And she was dealing with her own legal problems. Records show that McGee has been in and out of court for writing bad checks, mostly to restaurants and grocery stores.
She's also taken two men before a judge for paternity testing and child support.
Trey's suicide has driven a wedge between McGee and the Figures family. McGee blames Trey's father for the death and says Trey's grandmother didn't raise him right.
"I told my son at his funeral that I will get revenge," McGee said. "I will get justice for my son."
Essie believes Trey had everything he needed, from food to love. All the negativity is weighing on her, as she tries to deal with the suicide of a little boy she raised, who loved nothing more than a hug and a snack.
"People going around and saying a lot of lies just makes you feel bad," she said. "I'm just trying to get over this."
Keeping the kids in line
The Anniston school system has so far taken the brunt of the blame for Trey's death.
Immediately following the sixth-grader's suicide, his family spoke out, saying that bullies and gang members at Anniston Middle School drove Trey to take his own life.
Superintendent Joan Frazier is investigating the bullying claims and what school officials did about complaints family members say they made.
Frazier said Friday she's received hundreds of pages of documentation from school teachers and administrators. She's going through them, and has finished with August, September and October of 2008. That's the first year Trey attended Anniston Middle School.
"In that timeframe, I have not been able to find anything that documents any form of bullying or teasing," she said.
Frazier said she'll continue looking through the remaining year of papers and hopes to finish her investigation in the next week or so.
Trey's grandmother said she knows children at school were mean to the boy.
"They'd punch him and push him around," she said. "Call him mean names."
Trey stayed in trouble at school, too, she said. He took medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, she said, but he still was suspended fairly often and ended up failing the sixth grade because he was out of the classroom so much.
He spent time in the alternative school, too, she said.
"He liked it there," she said. "There was more supervision. They keep the kids in line and nobody messed with him."
Trey liked some things about school, she said, especially reading. Piled up on a table in his small bedroom are several ragged, well-read Harry Potter books.
"He'd read them over and over," Johnny Figures said. "I asked him why he did that, and he told me that he found out something new, got something new from it, every time he read them."
Trey was usually a happy boy, his grandmother said. He loved playing basketball in the yard, riding his bike around their Walnut Avenue neighborhood, playing with his best friend — a tiny black dog named Diego. That's why she can't understand why he'd kill himself.
So, she thinks, it had to be the school.
Violence begets violence
Experts say children and adolescents rarely have just one reason for committing suicide.
Trey had several suicide risk factors in his life, said Dr. Virginia Scott, director of the University of Alabama's psychology clinic.
Bullying, lack of family involvement and hopelessness are all major red flags for suicide risk, Scott said.
"Those things make a child feel abandoned and like there's something wrong with them," she said. "There's a lot of self-blame that goes along with it."
University of Alabama psychology professor Dr. John Lochman said familiarity with violence also is a suicide risk factor. He pointed to being around other children who are violent, or having violent family members as examples.
More Calhoun County children are arrested for violent crimes than in most parts of the state. The county ranks 58th of 67 counties, according to data collected by VOICES for Alabama's Children. That group documents the conditions of children throughout the state.
Some of those arrests could have happened at Anniston Middle School. The school reported 15 assaults, nine drug-related offenses and four weapons-related problems in 2007-2008, the year before Trey began attending classes there and the latest year for which statistics are available from the Alabama Department of Education.
"When a child is used to seeing or hearing about violence, it makes it much easier for him to be violent as well, toward himself or toward others," Lochman said.
Superintendent Frazier said she sees the effects of children's overexposure to violence and other societal ills. She said in-school behavior is influenced when children see and hear things they don't have the experience or wisdom to handle.
The effect can be overt, she said, and result in fighting. Or it can be introverted and cause a child to be depressed, withdrawn and sad.
Wishing for one more day
Trey's grandmother isn't sure what she'll do with his things.
His basketball sits alone. His bike is where he left it.
Diego's in the yard, barking at passersby.
The evidence of a boy's youth is scattered throughout the house — trophies, small Nike sneakers, Spiderman curtains.
"I keep forgetting he isn't coming back," Essie said.
She wishes for one more day with Trey, to ask why he felt so hopeless, to fix it if she could.
She knew him better than anybody. She kissed his bruises and made him brush his teeth. She taught him to say his prayers.
Not even she has the answer.
(Story by the Anniston Star)
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