Forgiveness is the best revenge

The voice on my answering machine was agitated, but polite. Alexander Foster needed to talk to me, his message said, “to set the record straight.”

He was angry over a column I wrote last week about a recent memorial service for a Pasadena teen who was shot to death in 2006 outside a house party in Eagle Rock.

The teenager, Kwame Gordon, 17, “was killed after he shot a … man who had confronted him and his friends outside a house party to which the group had been denied entrance,” the column said.

Kwame’s violent end had shocked family and friends, who described him — then and now — as a gentle, tenderhearted kid. They couldn’t imagine him wielding a weapon.

But the man Kwame shot was Foster’s son, Alex, then 26 — also tenderhearted, well-loved, with plenty of friends.

The shooting left him hospitalized for a week and blind for months.

A graduate of Eagle Rock High, Alex Foster had a toddler son, worked at his alma mater with special ed kids, and was manning the door at the party for his in-laws, who were hosting a gathering for their 18-year-old daughter.

“My son was not making trouble, he was not looking for trouble,” Alexander Foster told me. “He was shot in the head by a cold-blooded killer.”

Canonizing Kwame in print, he said, “is like having my son shot all over again.”

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Kwame’s killing was never solved, and police have never suggested that Alex Foster had anything to do with it.

“I don’t know what happened to Kwame,” Alex said Monday as I sat with his family for breakfast. “Blood was pouring into my eyes. I was just trying to survive.”

But he remembers every detail of being shot: The gun pointed at his face, a shot fired as he ducked, another bullet piercing the back of his head, fracturing his skull.

And he has no doubt it was Kwame holding the gun. “You kind of remember who shoots you in the head,” he said.

Alex had just turned Kwame, his brother and a cousin away from the party because it was breaking up and guests were heading home. “Things were chill. They seemed cool, not mad or anything,” Alex recalled.

Kwame extended his hand, “and I thought he was going to give me a handshake, or a fist bump.”

Instead, he saw “a small little gun, black with a brown butt,” he said. Chaos followed the shots. Somebody threw a bottle. He heard more “pop, pop, pop.”

His younger sister, Jazmine, rode with him in the ambulance, called their parents at the hospital and told them “Alex got shot.”

“I said ‘Where?’ and she said ‘In the head,’ ” his father recalled. “I knew he was gonna die.” They prayed all the way to the hospital.

Rushing into the hospital lobby, Alex’s mother, Martha, passed a car draped with yellow police tape, with a body sprawled across the back seat, a leg sticking stiffly out the door on one side.

She heard a nurse say “The young man who shot him is in the car outside. The one who got shot lost his eyesight.” They called their pastor, who met them at 3 a.m. in the hospital lobby.

They spent the rest of the night praying for Alex. And for the family of Kwame Gordon.

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Every family handles tragedy in its own way.

For Richard Gordon, Kwame’s father, the details of his death matter less than the aftermath and the message. Every year, he hosts a small community forum to honor his son and promote nonviolence.

Alexander Foster believes that’s missing the point, and an opportunity. “They’re constantly focusing on how good Kwame was. I’m sure he was a wonderful kid…

“But by the 11th grade, that was not the same Kwame anymore. He was willing to shoot somebody in cold blood. You can’t get around that, can’t ignore it…. You have to open your eyes to what’s there.”

The Fosters understand why the story seems so puzzling: How does a good kid like Kwame — private schools, affluence and educated parents — quietly, dangerously slip off course?

Their son was popular in school too; an athlete — football, soccer and track — who helped launch a “buddy” program for handicapped students.

“But our kids were no angels,” his mother admitted. “The difference is, we knew what they were doing. And they knew they couldn’t get away with it.”

Their friends joked that the Foster kids were grounded almost every weekend. Mom regularly inspected their rooms and drawers. “They would get mad at me,” she said. “But I wanted them to be good citizens. I will not blind myself to what they’re doing.”

They chaperoned every school dance and attended every event with their video camera. Dad was president of the PTA; mom had a network of eyes and ears on campus.

“I was more afraid of my mom than of going to jail,” Alex said.

I asked if he’s angry about what happened. He’s not. “I’ve got two beautiful kids. I have a job, a great family.”

He wants people to know that it wasn’t his friends who shot Kwame. “It wasn’t retaliation. My friends weren’t there…. And they don’t carry guns.”

He understands his father’s pain. “But I’m at peace,” he said. “I’m not looking for sympathy.”

And he’s still praying for Kwame’s family.

Three months after he was shot, he had a talk with his father on their front porch. “My dad wanted to sue; he had the lawyers, the paperwork, everything. I said no. Because that would mean the last image Kwame’s mom would have of her son would be him being an attempted murderer.

“I told my mom, ‘Let it go. You have me. What does Kwame’s mother have? Why would I put such pain on her?’ ”

His father softened as he watched his son. “It’s embarrassing for me to be reminded of that. I wanted revenge. I don’t anymore. We’re not victims; we’re survivors. I just want to move on.”

sandy.banks@latimes.com