Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for January 31, 2009 CRIME & PUNISHMENT

Palm Beach County School District pays for murder suspect's rides to school

By MICHAEL LaFORGIA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

After he was accused in the murder of a beloved high school football star, 16-year-old Willie Felton rode to school in style.

Each morning, as the other teenage suspect huddled within the bleak gray confines of the Palm Beach County Jail, Felton sank into the plush leather seats of a sleek black executive car.

The Palm Beach County School District hired the private car service for Felton, the suspected triggerman in the Sept. 27 killing of Norman Griffith Jr., to take him between Belle Glade and a Royal Palm Beach alternative school — and county taxpayers picked up the tab, according to interviews and records obtained by The Palm Beach Post.

The cost of this special treatment?

About $435 a week, records show.

In funding more than 20 trips, including at least five instances in which a Lincoln Town Car ferried Felton to Turning Points Academy and back, the school district shelled out more than $1,734, records show.

The special arrangement gave Felton cause to swagger, according to law enforcement officers and observers in the Glades.

"He's at a point where he's enjoying his 15 minutes of fame," said one law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk about the case. "He calls himself the rock star."

Palm Beach County Violent Crimes Task Force detectives arrested Felton on a first-degree murder charge on Oct. 3, but he was released the next day for monitoring by the Department of Juvenile Justice. He remains free while prosecutors mull whether to seek a grand jury indictment.

School officials made special arrangements to drive Felton, a former Glades Central High School student, to Turning Points after Glades students threatened him, law enforcement sources said.

"If we have a student that's enrolled in one of our programs, we have an obligation to transport them," said Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Art Johnson. "We've transported a number of students from the Glades to the coast."

Johnson acknowledged that few of these students travel by Lincoln Town Car.

"Honestly, that's the exception rather than the rule," he said.

Although school officials wouldn't discuss Felton's case specifically, citing privacy laws, spokesman Nat Harrington said school district administrators assess each student's needs and "make alternative arrangements" as best they can.

"We contract with transportation providers," Harrington said. "If the vendor doesn't have any other (vehicle) alternative, they use the equipment that they have. If that turns out to be something that someone else says is inappropriate, well, that's an opinion."

Jean Altidor, who drove Felton a handful of times between Belle Glade and Royal Palm Beach, said the teen sometimes was disrespectful and often passed the 74-mile round trip talking on his cellphone.

Still, Altidor said, he tried to impress the importance of learning on Felton, who reminded him of his own son.

"I told him, 'You can be a good boy,' " Altidor said. "But he never said a word to me."

By Jan. 20, after a reporter questioned the practice of taking Felton to school by executive car, school officials began driving Felton alone on a school bus to and from Wellington, where his mother had recently moved, sources said.

The other suspect in Griffith's killing, Carl Booth Jr., 17, sits in the Palm Beach County Jail, awaiting trial in the death of the Pahokee High School linebacker.

Sheriff's ballistics experts determined that the bullets Booth fired missed Griffith, who was shot in the head behind the wheel of his mother's blue Dodge Durango outside a community dance in Belle Glade.

Felton, however, leveled a .380 handgun and fired a round into Griffith's head, according to witness Leefranklin Jones, an 18-year-old Belle Glade man accused of shooting a Glades Central football player with the same handgun a week earlier.

Then-State Attorney Barry Krischer elected to send Booth's case before a grand jury, and the result was an indictment on a first-degree murder charge. A spokesman for new State Attorney Michael McAuliffe, who took office Jan. 6, wouldn't say why Felton's case wasn't treated the same way.

"Presentments to the grand jury are not a matter of public record until after the case has been presented," spokesman Mike Edmondson said. "It's an ongoing criminal investigation."

The situation highlights a perennial tension between detectives whose arrests sometimes depend on unsavory sources of information and prosecutors anxious about the credibility of "dirty witnesses," according to interviews with veteran investigators.

As the gears of the legal system were turning, Griffith's family and friends struggled to understand why Felton walked free.

"He really needs to be off the streets. He's a threat to society," said Jackie Griffith, the slain football player's mother. "He needs to be punished for what he's doing. We shouldn't have to be fearful in society today; we should be able to walk freely without looking over our shoulders."

"I don't know why he ain't in jail," said Donald Johnson, 18, who was sitting next to Griffith when Griffith was shot in the head. If Felton is on the streets any longer, he said, "somebody's going to catch him."

Staff writer Laura Green contributed to this story.