Issac Bailey | I mentored one of the alleged Sunhouse convenience store killers

A couple of years ago, Marsha Tennant invited me into her classroom.

She was a teacher at the Horry County Education Center, or what’s commonly referred to as the alternative school, on the outskirts of Conway.

She was the kind of teacher who struggled through frustration to reach the toughest-to-reach kids, even when it seemed hopeless.

Her students had been kicked out of their base school for a variety of reasons.

They had problems, for sure, but talent, too.

The tragedy was that they were good young people who had become defined by their worst acts - and too many of those students had begun defining themselves the same way.

I drove up to the school and gave the class the usual spiel about life and the importance of making good decisions.

I was so impressed with their questions and interest, I decided to return.

And I kept returning week after week the entire semester.

We laughed a good bit, cried some. Sometimes there was anger.

I brought in lessons about self control, provided tips about recognizing the long game of life and the need to not get overwhelmed by the day-to-day drama of a too-hard existence.

I gave them my phone number and email address, told them to contact me any time. A few did.

We talked about their goals, some of which included becoming rappers and athletes and business owners.

I brought in information detailing the practical steps required to turn those dreams into reality, emphasizing that a commitment to sustained hard work and focus would serve them well no matter what.

I had them write about their personal struggles, shared mine.

Some of them came from unstable families, some from unstable neighborhoods, some both.

One young man had been kicked out of his parents’ home and struggled every night to find a warm place to sleep.

The one girl in the class was pregnant, beautiful, passionate and smart — but still often got into physical fights.

Another student confided he sold drugs, was scared and tired and wanted a way out but was having trouble seeing his way clear. He felt daily pressure to stay in that deadly game.

Most of them suffered through poverty, which is no surprise given that about 60 percent of students in Horry County Schools receive free or reduced lunch.

“Poverty and lack of opportunity and hope seem to get our at-risk youth everywhere,” Tennant said. “This nation needs to front load the system rather than stay in crisis mode. I saw this at my first teaching job in an inner-city school 45 years ago. Little has changed. The staff at HCEC got up every morning with the determination to make a difference, but it's a crap shoot. I stayed the course in encouraging them and held my breath when students left each day.”

Many of those kids made it through their toughest moments, some making it to Horry-Georgetown Technical College, some landing retail jobs, at least one in construction, Tennant said.

Even though many of the students I met had done monstrous things, not one of them was a monster - not even Jerome Jenkins, whom we knew as JJ.

If you have been following the news about the Sunhouse convenience store slayings, you now know his name, too.

He was the 20-year-old arrested with two older men.

Each of them is charged with two counts of murder, three counts of armed robbery, three counts of using a firearm during a violent crime, and a count of attempted murder.

I didn’t make the connection until a distraught Tennant got in touch with me.

“I have had the most deep hurt since learning the news,” she said. “ I watched him get within a few weeks of Job Corps and something happened that he didn't get to go. It was a Job Corps issue. That could have been a life changer.”

“The JJ I knew gave me his grandmother's recipes, sang hymns and wrote songs. That was a very long time ago, in a faraway place. That doesn't seem real anymore,” she said. “JJ is charged with murder. I do not know that JJ.”

I don’t know what to think, don’t know how to process the news.

Just last week I referenced the convenience store murders as the worst kind of crime. Families had been robbed of loved ones during crimes of the random sort, the kind that could turn anyone into an unwitting victim, no matter how much we live our lives to avoid trouble.

At that time, I didn’t know a young man I had mentored was allegedly involved.

Nonetheless, the horror is the same, which is why I understand the anger and pain and thirst for retribution many have screamed for.

I won’t join those calls, though. I can’t.

The public only knows JJ as an alleged murderer. I knew him long before Friday’s press conference and his mug shot was published in the pages of the newspaper I’ve been working for since 1997.

If he participated in such a horrific act, he has to face the severe consequences that comes with it, something else we discussed in his class.

There’s no getting around that.

I still hold out hope, naive as it may sound, that we’ll learn he had nothing to do with it.

Sherry Stull, the mother of victim Trisha Stull, believes JJ was the person who killed her daughter.

In his first court appearance, he apologized to the family, said he wasn’t involved.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, “but I knew about it.”

In Tennant’s class, I told JJ and the other students — again and again and again — that it is often the seemingly inconsequential decision made in an unthinking moment that often leads to horrors that could change their lives, and the lives of others, forever.

One bad choice at the wrong time was all it took, I said.

I don’t know that that message got through then.

I hope it does now.

This story was originally published February 11, 2015 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Issac Bailey | I mentored one of the alleged Sunhouse convenience store killers ."