By Lisa Black and Steve Schmadeke
Tribune reporters
10:52 PM CST, November 14, 2008They were smart kids with bright futures and an old-fashioned sense of brotherhood: When one messed up, they all paid a price.
But early Friday, some of the teens who made up Minority Men, a leadership group at Chicago's North Lawndale College Prep, made a mistake from which they could not recover.
Three of them drowned in the Fox River in Algonquin after sneaking out of a camp lodge and dragging paddle boats to the frigid, swift-moving water. The boats, which had been set aside for the winter, had holes in the bottom where drainage plugs had been removed.
Two teens couldn't make it to shore when their boat began to sink, officials said. A third jumped in and tried to save them. All of them died.
The tragedy crushed the high school's community, from the group's surviving members to the victims' families to all who knew and loved the teens.
"He was always helping," sophomore Datashia Warren said of her friend Melvin Choice III, 17. "When you needed a shoulder he was right there."The other victims were Jimmy Avant, 18, and Adrian Alexander Jones, 16.
They were among 31 North Lawndale teens who went to YMCA Camp Algonquin last week for an eight-day retreat organized by VisionQuest International, an Atlanta organization that trains young people in ethical leadership.
It was just another trip for Minority Men, a program for high-achieving students aiming for success in college and beyond. Brigette Jones-Cooper, Jones' mother, said the group toured college campuses in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
"They get them ready for life as young leaders," she said. "They help them with their classwork. They make them well-rounded young men: no gangs, no drugs.
"All of them were good kids."
Accountability was the group's hallmark, said Jones' sister, Chimere.
"If one has bad grades, they all have to study together," she said. "If one . . . has a Saturday detention all of them have a Saturday detention."
Still, as the camp came to a close, officials said about half of the group sneaked out of the lodge early Friday, apparently undetected by nine chaperons in the building.
The teens had been warned to stay away from the water, YMCA officials said. But in what seemed to be a late attempt at unauthorized fun, they hauled six 300-pound paddle boats about 150 feet to the river.
They likely didn't realize the boats had been prepared for winter, their cork-sized plugs removed to allow precipitation to drain. The boats went into the 42-degree, pitch-black water, and at least one?occupied by two victims?began to submerge.
"I heard people running and yelling on the shore at around 1:30 in the morning," said Pam Shumway, who lives across river. "I heard them yelling, 'Get out of the boat! Get out of the water!'"
A third teen leaped into the water and tried to save the others, authorities said. But the current was strong, and he went under too.
Firefighters and rescuers scrambled to the river, but it was too late. They found the first body just before 6 a.m., 50 feet from shore in 10 feet of water. About five hours later, they recovered the other two.
Amid talk of re-examining school policies, some relatives questioned why the camp hadn't secured the boats. Some students, meanwhile, noted that risk-taking was part of being young.
"They didn't know what they were about to get into," Walter Anderson,
16, said. "We are going to be kids."Tribune reporters Carolyn Starks, Azam Ahmed, Sara Olkon, Carlos Sadovi and Gerry Smith, and freelance reporter Amanda Marrazzo contributed to this story, which was written by Tribune reporter John Keilman.
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