When One Slip Causes Big Fall : All-State Receiver’s Future in Doubt After Shooting

Before the morning that a bullet ripped through the door of his girlfriend’s home in Newbury Park, Leodes Van Buren was a whisper away from beating the odds.

Police arrested Van Buren, an all-state wide receiver at Newbury Park High, on April 8. He was charged with one count of shooting into an inhabited dwelling. Van Buren’s girlfriend, Marcie James, and their 2-year-old daughter, Andreya, were in the house at the time, but no one was injured.

Van Buren, 19, pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in Ventura County Superior Court beginning Monday on the felony charge, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in state prison.

But whatever the outcome of the trial, the incident, at least temporarily, has shattered what was shaping up as a remarkable success story.

Van Buren, once on the path to gangbanging, instead became the first person in his immediate family to graduate from high school. He had signed a letter of intent to play football at Colorado this fall.

But after his arrest, Colorado officials informed Van Buren that he did not meet academic requirements for the school and declared his letter of intent void.

That was a blow to Van Buren, one of the best receivers California has ever produced. The 6-foot-1, 190-pound receiver led Newbury Park to the Southern Section Division II championship last fall. He had a state-record 269 receptions and 4,456 yards receiving in his prep career.

Although Van Buren maintains his innocence of the weapons charge, he said the experience has forced him to mature.

“I just learned my lesson that no matter how big you are, you can always fall down,” Van Buren said.

And by changing his story from what he initially told police on the day of the shooting, Van Buren contributed to his tumble.

Van Buren said he went to James’ house after they had argued on the telephone on the morning of April 8. He later called a 911 emergency operator and reported that he had fired a shot at her house. James corroborated the story.

But the next day, Van Buren told police a companion had actually fired the shot.

Van Buren said he had initially lied to police to protect his companion.

“I thought I could get away with it because I played football and I was good at it,” Van Buren said.

Van Buren, who never has identified his companion, feared possible retaliation if he did.

James, an all-Western State Conference softball pitcher at Moorpark College, also has changed her story.

She said in a phone interview that she had lied to police because she was angry at Van Buren.

“I had found out he cheated on me and that broke my heart,” James said. “I told myself that if he does something to hurt me, I will get him back. It was immature, but I did it.”

The two have since reconciled.

At a preliminary hearing on May 26, James, 20, testified that it was Van Buren’s companion who had fired the shot. She also testified that before Van Buren fled the scene that morning, he told her he would say he had done it “to show everyone how much I love you.”

Police searched the house where Van Buren lives with his legal guardian, Ken McGee, but did not recover a gun.

Van Buren said he is confident he will be found not guilty.

“I know what happened. (Marcie) knows what happened. We are going to put all this behind us,” Van Buren said.

There has been a lot that Van Buren has had to put behind him.

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Van Buren grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, in a neighborhood where they pulled dead men out of the community pool and where the path you took to your friend’s house was dictated by where you thought opposing gang members might not be lurking that day.

“You have to guess, and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t,” Van Buren said.

When he was 10, Van Buren saw what happened when one of his friends made an unlucky choice. The boy took a shortcut across a baseball field and about 10 other boys suddenly appeared. They surrounded the boy, beat him and left him paralyzed.

Even then, Van Buren was drawn to the violence.

“We used to hang out on the corners and wait until someone was walking down the street and then just beat them up for no reason at all,” he said.

Van Buren watched his sister, Lady, become involved in gangs and he knew that if he continued the way he was going, he would follow.

“When you’re really young, you’re not in a gang yet, but you hang out with them and it’s like you are,” Van Buren said. “Eventually, you get jumped in, and to me, that’s when your life is over.”

Van Buren went to his mother, Annie Carter, and told her, “Mom, I want to be something in life.”

That meant getting away from his neighborhood. But Carter was a single, unemployed mother and didn’t have the resources to move.

Enter McGee, Van Buren’s sixth-grade teacher at the time at Woodcrest Elementary School.

“(Van Buren) really was a neat kid,” McGee said. “He came into my room and was kind of like a leader almost instantly. He has a lot of presence about him.”

McGee became a surrogate father for Van Buren, whose own father had separated from his mother and left the state when Van Buren was 4.

McGee had divorced years earlier and his two children lived in Florida with his former wife.

The situation seemed ideal--the lonely single man needing some company and the wayward youth needing a change of environment. With Carter’s permission, Van Buren moved into McGee’s Newbury Park home. They gave each other nicknames, becoming “Lee” and “Gee.”

“I just felt like God sent a gift to me,” Carter said of McGee.

There were times, however, when Van Buren and McGee felt that the arrangement was less than heavenly.

“It wasn’t always easy,” McGee said. “He wasn’t very accustomed to a structure.”

Things like attending school and telling McGee of his whereabouts were novel to Van Buren. Discipline did not happen overnight.

“A lot of it was giving him a lot of time,” McGee said. “He needed time to think about things . . . and because I didn’t have any other children here, I could just kind of wait for him.”

Van Buren got his wake-up call in eighth grade. McGee told him that because of his poor attendance at the Conejo Valley continuation school, he might not be able to attend Newbury Park his freshman year.

That meant Van Buren would not be playing football, something he was eager to do.

So Van Buren put in hours after school and during the summer to make up for lost time and persuade the principal at Conejo Valley to give him the necessary recommendation for Newbury Park.

The principal was impressed with Van Buren’s effort and gave him the recommendation.

And Van Buren started on the varsity his freshman year. In football, he did not disappoint anyone.

“He was a very intense player,” said George Hurley, Newbury Park’s coach. “He never, ever missed practice. He didn’t take it lightly and clown around and goof off. When it was time to work, he was working.”

Van Buren also had the good fortune to play with quarterback Keith Smith for three seasons. Smith ended his prep career as the state’s all-time passing leader with 9,971 yards.

“It was really nice for us that both of these people were together at the same time,” Hurley said.

Van Buren said that he does not really enjoy football, but wants to continue playing because it can help him get a college education.

Although Van Buren requested a release from his letter of intent after hearing that Colorado might declare it void, questions remain about the propriety of the school’s action.

Dave Plati, Colorado sports information director, said that although Van Buren had passed the Scholastic Aptitude Test, he had not completed all the academic requirements to be admitted to the school.

“The irony of it is that he wasn’t even admissible here to start with . . . ,” Plati said. “We’re allowed to make cases (to the school’s admissions board) for certain kids, but with this other thing hanging over his head, it would be hard to make a case for him.”

McGee said that Van Buren had not finished an English class that Colorado had asked him totake at Newbury Park during the spring.

Hurley, however, insists that Van Buren was academically eligible to get into the school.

“I think it probably was an easy way for (Colorado) to back out of a situation that both (the school) and Leodes were uncomfortable with,” Hurley said.

So Van Buren is left to wait and see if and when his football career will continue.

“It looked like we were going to finish high school and everything was going to fall into place the way we had planned for it to,” McGee said. “And now, it’s kind of like, get through this and then we’ll see where to go from there, and that’s hard.”