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I met Bryan Wright four years ago when he was 18, fresh out of Pasco High School. He was going places.
Today, one of those places is prison.
It's a shame what happened to the outgoing, friendly, handsome young man I met in the fall of 2000.
Bryan and his mother put some of the blame on life in Dade City, a small town where jobs are scarce. And they put some blame on the Dade City Police Department, where they say small-town cops watch you make one bad move, then seem to make it a point to nail you over and over, at every turn.
But Bryan says he also made his own mistakes. He has a temper, and when he's pushed, he pushes back. He hung out with people who sell drugs, but those are some of the people he grew up around.
Bryan won me over in 2000 with a story of being a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He made a kid's mistake. I hoped it would all blow over.
He had been a Pasco High football standout and an all-county weight lifter. He blew an ankle his junior year, but he had a pretty good run in high school just the same. He was homecoming king as a senior.
On Oct. 20, 2000, Bryan was on a delayed entry program to the Army. He was due to join in 10 days. He was going to get out of Dade City and away from trouble others around him had fallen into, but trouble found him just the same.
On that day, about 150 kids were hanging out at the McDonald's along U.S. 301 after a Pasco High football game. Someone called the police.
A scuffle ensued. A few days later, police Chief Phil Thompson called the scene "total chaos." Somewhere in that chaos, police tried to move Bryan along.
He punched an officer in the fray. Police say he broke an officer's nose. Bryan said he saw the officer days later, and she looked fine. Either way, he was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer.
Years passed. The Army won't take someone with a felony charge pending. I would see Bryan at court appearances or a football game sometimes. He was always friendly. I hoped it would all work out.
His name started showing up on more court calendars, not just for the parking lot scuffle.
In January 2001, he was accused of carrying a concealed pistol and being in a stolen car, but those charges were dropped. Eight months later, he was accused of trying to sell crack to an undercover deputy. Bryan said he was hanging out with some dealers, but someone else dropped the crack into the deputy's car.
A month later, there was another scuffle with the police in front of his mother's house.
A year later, in September 2002, a sheriff's deputy searched him during a traffic stop, and Bryan had crack cocaine in his pocket. Bryan told me he was holding the drugs for someone else.
In February of last year, during another traffic stop, police said he dropped a vial of crack cocaine. It wasn't his, Bryan said.
His mother, Catherine Wright, says she will always believe in her son. She loves him and stands by him. He has a 1-year-old son, Bryan Jr., and is supposed to move into a new apartment with his fiancee and son next week. Mrs. Wright will show off her grandchildren to anyone who will look. You don't even have to ask.
She said she is okay with prosecutors and the judge. But she's angry at Dade City police. She says they marked him as a bad kid four years ago.
"They tagged my son," she said. "They ruined this young man's life. My kid is scarred for the rest of his life. I blame the police department."
Police Capt. David Duff, a 20-year veteran, says no one singled out Bryan. But in a small town, the same officers patrol the same area over and over. They are bound to make contact with the same people.
Bryan's case is painful, Duff said, because he has known him for years.
"Part of being in a small town is that you know these kids," he said. "You hate to see this happen to them."
Bryan is 22 now. Last month, he pleaded no contest - which means he doesn't really admit anything, but he agrees not to fight the charges - to two counts of battery on a law enforcement officer, three counts of cocaine possession, plus resisting arrest with violence.
The deal is, he has to spend 17 months in prison. A judge agreed this week to give him until July 15 to get his affairs in order.
Bryan and I sat Wednesday on the porch of his mother's apartment.
He wished he had gotten out of town.
"If you don't get out of Dade City, if you're young and black, if you're in the system one time, it's over for you," he said.
And yeah, he said, he hung around with some people selling drugs. But when you're poor, a low-paying job doesn't go far. It's hard to support yourself or a family on a minimum wage job, so people look for extra money where they can get it.
"You've got to have a hustle," he said.
So some people sell drugs, he said.
Bryan cuts hair for extra money, something he's been doing since I first met him. On Wednesday, his clippers rested on a concrete windowsill, next to a plastic chair on the porch where he seats his customers.
When he gets out of prison, Bryan hopes to become a certified barber, maybe in Georgia.
"I've seen people all around me go to prison, get caught up in drugs," Wright told me four years ago. "I don't want to be part of that. I don't want to get caught up in trouble. I've got to get out of Dade City. I know I need to get away from here."
Apparently, he was right.