IN KWANE'S WAKE

By SCOTT PURKS
Published December 26, 2005

	[AP photo]
	Kwane Doster, right, starred at Robinson before playing at Vanderbilt, here against Navy on Sept. 25, 2004. Doster was shot three months later.
	[Times photo: Scott Purks]
	Kelly Doster is never far from photos of her late son, Kwane, a football star who died in a shooting in Ybor City.
	[Times photo: Scott Purks]
	Jermaine Doster and Kelly during a homecoming event at Robinson High, where Jermaine, a junior, was part of the court.
	[Times photo: Scott Purks]
	Bryan Jennings spoke to Doster, his best friend, about an hour before the shooting. The two spoke nearly daily even after Doster went to Vanderbilt.
	[Times photo, 2004: Brian Wagner]
	Rodney "Roscoe" Roman turned himself in at the Hillsborough County Jail five days after the shooting. At left is his attorney, Daniel Castillo.

A finger pulled a trigger and a bullet tore into Kwane Doster, who bled to death on an Ybor City street.

A phone next to Kelly Doster's bed rang minutes later and she remembers a voice saying, "Kwane's been shot. He may have been killed."

The cries for her oldest son filled her tiny Port Tampa home. She was crawling down the hallway. Her other son, Jermaine, rushed from his room crying in fright. Her best friend, Gwen Hadley, called out "What happened?" above the screams.

By the time Kelly got to Kwane she was standing over his dead body in a hospital room. It was about 3:30 a.m., Dec. 26, 2004.

She said she couldn't talk. Think. See. Breathe.

"My beautiful baby was lying there, but his heart wasn't beating," she said. "Not a breath coming out. You can't imagine what that's like for a mother.

"Just gone. Gone! All I could do was pray to God to help me. Please dear Lord give me some strength. Pleease! "

There was so much wrong. He was 21. He was a star running back from Robinson High who had made good playing for Vanderbilt. He was on pace for his degree in sports management. He was beloved, a role model for his younger brother and just about every other athlete at Robinson. At 5 feet 11, 190 pounds he might have had a career in the NFL.

"He was," Robinson football coach Mike DePue said, "a true symbol of hope to people around here."

"And he was taken away," Kelly Doster said, "over something so stupid."

Kwane spent Christmas Day last year with his mom and family. Friends picked him up about 11:30 p.m.

They drove around Ybor City and got into a trash-talking contest with a car that pulled alongside. A gun appeared in a window. Shots were fired.

Kwane Doster was murdered.

Life changed.

***

The mother

Since the moment he died, Kelly Doster said she has looked for Kwane everywhere, every day. And one day ...

"There he was," she said. "I was standing on my porch and he was a big old black and gold butterfly, the biggest one you've ever seen in your life. And he was bouncin' and dancin' up to me.

"I knew it was Kwane. He was black and gold just like his uniform at Vanderbilt and he had come back to see me. He was happy and he tellin' me, "Mama, everything's okay. Everything is gonna be just fine. You don't need to be sad anymore because I'm okay.'

"And then that big old butterfly flew off across the field and was gone. And that's the only time I feel like Kwane's come to see me since he left us. I wish all the time that he will come again. I lie awake at night waiting for him. Maybe not as a butterfly but in a vision, a feeling."

She said every night since his death she has stayed awake until 3 a.m. because doctors told her he was pronounced dead at that time. When 3 a.m. rolls around she looks at his picture and tells him good night.

Always, she has pictures of Kwane nearby. Hanging from her car's rearview mirror, on the mantel, television, shelves, in her purse.

Sometimes, she said, she'll hear his voice, and for a second she believes he's there. Then, as silly as it sounds, she'll remember that he is, in fact, dead. Then the pain grips her tightly around the throat.

She said she has tried to stay positive through the holidays because she needs to be strong, and if she could be strong, she said that would be the best gift she could give her family.

The best gift she could get?

"I want a butterfly to come dancing by," she said. "A big old black and gold one."

***

The brother

The cries from Jermaine reached from the back room to Kelly.

A month or so had passed since Kwane's death and Kelly believed it was time for the family to go through his belongings. She gave Jermaine his privacy, until his cries reached out to her.

She found him in the middle of Kwane's floor, sobbing. She kneeled with him, hugged him, told him, "It's going to be okay. Kwane's going to make it right for us. He's watching out for us."

Then Jermaine went to the bathroom and, as Kelly leaned her head against the door, trying to console him, Jermaine kept on crying.

Like water against a dam, Jermaine had held back the pain.

"But no one can hold that back forever," Kelly said. "It catches up to you sooner or later."

Jermaine, a junior at Robinson and, like his brother, the team's leading running back, has had only one other outburst that Kelly knows of.

"Mostly," said Bryan Jennings, a lifelong family friend, "he's been more to himself. He doesn't really talk about it. I think he's all right now, but in the beginning we were more worried about him than anybody.

"He loved Kwane so much, you know? He looked up to his brother."

For this article, Jermaine agreed to talk, then after a day, politely declined.

***

The best friend

About an hour before Kwane was shot, he called his lifelong friend, his best friend, Bryan Jennings.

And that phone call is why Jennings wishes every day that he could go back to Dec. 26, 2004. If he had only driven out and picked up Doster as he had asked: His friend's final request that Jennings has played a million times in his head.

Jennings tells himself, Nothing sounded wrong. Or did it? No, no, he tells himself, he sounded like the same Kwane he had talked with nearly every day of his life, even when he was at Vanderbilt.

"I could definitely tell if something was wrong by his voice," Jennings said. "You know we talked so much that if we skipped two days he'd call up and leave a message saying, "What's wrong, you don't love me anymore?' And he'd laugh like that. Sometimes, you know, even after all this time, it doesn't seem real. Sometimes I think I'll call him, but then I can't."

He looked down at the medallion around his neck, the one of Kwane's smiling face that he has worn every day since he was killed, the one that reads:

Kwane

4/13/83-12/26/04

Brother 4 Life

***

The accused

During the day on New Year's Eve 2004, Rodney "Roscoe" Roman - sought in connection with the shooting - walked solemnly into the Orient Road Jail accompanied by his attorney.

Police took Roman into custody after two of Doster's friends - who were in the car but not hit - identified him as the shooter.

Roman, 29, was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.

Four days later, bail was denied, though attorney Daniel Castillo said the arrest was a case of mistaken identity.

"(Roman) wasn't there," Castillo told the media that day. "He was at home."

Castillo said the fact that Roman turned himself in when he learned police were looking for him should have helped prove his innocence.

On Jan. 12 a grand jury handed up an indictment. A week later Roman formally pleaded innocent to all charges.

On June15 Roman, who could not be reached for this article, was released on $250,000 bail.

A trial date has not been set.

[Last modified December 26, 2005, 07:17:27]