Mom loses 2nd son to violence

A Clearwater mother suffers a numbing loss when a second son is slain 19 years after his brother died as violently.

By CHRIS TISCH
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 9, 2002

CLEARWATER -- Both brothers made their mother proud.

Both played sports and became stars at Countryside High School in the early 1980s.

Then on a June night in 1983, the older brother, Chris Bolden, was an innocent bystander when a melee erupted on N Greenwood Avenue.

A man pulled a revolver and shot into the crowd. Chris, a 20-year-old college student on break, was hit in the head. He died the next day.

Nineteen years later, tragedy struck again. Late Thursday, Chris' brother, Clarence Bolden, was playing cards with friends at a cottage on Fulton Avenue when a gunman shot him. Clarence, 37, died in the cottage. Police say the shooting may have occurred during a robbery.

On Friday, the mother of both, Johnnie Mae Baldwin, struggled with the thought of two sons taken by violence.

"It just seems like a repeat of history, like the same thing is happening all over again," she said. "I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do. I don't know what I can do. I just have to pray."

Clearwater police arrested the man who killed Chris Bolden four days after the shooting. The shooter, Roy Frank Webster, was sentenced in 1984 to 20 years in prison. He was released six years later.

Clearwater detectives worked all night Thursday and into daylight Friday, and planned to continue their search for Clarence Bolden's killer Friday night, police spokesman Wayne Shelor said.

No arrests were reported.

Baldwin said her sons were close. They played on the same athletic teams in high school.

Chris later took a scholarship to play football at a junior college in Texas. Clarence didn't play in college, but eventually married, had a baby girl and launched a lawn service business.

Friends and family said Clarence Bolden usually got together with friends Thursday nights in the cottage, which is adjacent to a friend's mother's home at 1722 Fulton Ave. The group played cards and talked of old times.

About 10:45 p.m. Thursday, police received a 911 call from the home reporting a shooting. Police arrived and found Adrick Buck, 39, with a gunshot wound to his arm. They also found Clarence dead.

Baldwin said she heard from witnesses and friends that two masked men barged into the cottage. She said Clarence was facing the door and was shot immediately. The men ordered everyone else to the floor, she said, then shot Buck when he hesitated. Buck was taken to the hospital for his injury.

Baldwin said she has heard that one of Clarence's friends had $1,500 in his pocket, which the robbers took before fleeing.

Shelor couldn't confirm that account because he said investigators still aren't certain what happened. He said witness accounts of the shooting have varied, though police don't think it was a random act.

Soon after the investigation began Thursday night, family members and friends converged on the scene, some weeping.

Pervis Pasco, 38, was one of them. He played basketball with Clarence at Countryside in the early 1980s. Pasco was a center, Clarence a guard.

"It's messed up, especially if it's over something as silly as a robbery," Pasco said. "To take a man's life, there's not enough money in the world.

"His mama, this is going to be torture on her," he added. "Both her sons taken out."

Friends said Clarence was happy-go-lucky, his face always stretched in a smile.

"He was a good man, a quiet man. He didn't harm nobody," said his cousin, Carlos Mobley. "He's a friend, he's a cousin, he's a buddy. All he liked to do was play cards, and that's what he was doing when they came to shoot him."

Clarence is survived by his wife, Andrea, and his 7-year-old daughter, Tyra.

Baldwin, his mother, said she has five children left, three sons and two daughters. She held them close Friday as she bore the loss of two sons to gunshots 19 years apart.

"I feel that I want to hold them and thank God they're here," she said. "I don't ask why because it's the Lord's will, but I'm going to miss my baby. I'm going to miss that smile."

- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Chris Tisch can be reached at 445-4156 or tisch@sptimes.com.

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