cannabisnews.com: Teenage Parolee Praised! 





Teenage Parolee Praised! 
Posted by FoM on February 21, 1999 at 08:12:21 PT

FORT WORTH Eddie Antwine's shot at redemption came just after midnight. Antwine, a 17-year-old parolee and recovering addict, was on the phone when he heard screaming next door. Rushing outside, he saw smoke pouring from a home shared by two elderly widows.
By the time firefighters arrived 10 minutes later, Antwine had pulled one of the women from the fire. With that act, his relatives said, he showed that he had abandoned the selfishness of an adolescence spent smoking and selling crack cocaine."He's grown 4 inches to me," said his mother, Carolyn Antwine.Early Friday morning, Antwine found 86-year-old Thelma Matthews standing on her front lawn on East Terrell Avenue, crying for help. Her sister, Verna Harvest, 85, lay inside the house, which was rapidly filling with smoke and flames, officials said.Antwine sucked in air, clamped his mouth shut and ran into the fire. Harvest was lying on her back in the front hall, staring up helplessly at him, he said.He reached out, clasped her outstretched hands and pulled her onto the front lawn before firefighters arrived.Harvest and Matthews were airlifted to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Harvest died Friday of burns and smoke inhalation. Matthews was in critical condition in the hospital's burn unit last night, officials said.The cause of the blaze remained undetermined.Harvest had moved in with her older sister after a debilitating car accident two years ago, said Matthews' granddaughter, Patricia Davis, 35.The two women lived in Matthews' wood-frame house, set hard against train tracks at the east end of a street lined with immaculately kept lawns tended mostly by retired widows and widowers.Struggling to survive on a fixed income, neighbors said, the sisters slept in the same bed and dried their clothes on a sagging line in a back yard fenced with haphazardly fastened sheets of aluminum siding.Antwine was paroled from the Texas Youth Commission in January after serving a 13-month sentence for possessing a controlled substance. The sentence came after a harsh adolescence marked by the death of his father from liver disease after abusing intravenous drugs, his mother said.She said she spent nine months in a court-ordered rehabilitation program after being arrested for crack possession in 1995.Her son smoked crack and sold it before his incarceration, he said."I didn't have no empathy then, or no kind of kindness," Antwine said.That description contrasts sharply with his heroism this week, said Fort Worth City Councilman Ralph McCloud, who represents Antwine's near southeast Fort Worth neighborhood. McCloud contacted firefighters after the rescue and is considering presenting Antwine with a commendation for bravery."I plan to meet the young man and thank him for his courage and valor," McCloud said. "This can be the kind of thing that helps put him on the right track."Michael Weissenstein, (817) 390-7386Send your comments to weissenm star-telegram.com 
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