The intersection of London and Ellis streets in the Old Town neighborhood of Brunswick has long returned to its quiet past of stately Victorian houses and century-old live oak trees.
A year after the mayhem that unfolded there when a teenager pointed a handgun to the head of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago and pulled the trigger, some residents say the city has bonded and emerged stronger than it was that horrific day.
On March 21, 2013, Sherry West said she was attacked by were two teenagers while pushing her son, Antonio, in a stroller from the post office to her Union Street apartment. While passing through the intersection, just a block from where she lived, the teenagers attempted to rob her, she said. Antonio died almost instantly from a gunshot and West was wounded in a leg.
De’Marquise Elkins, 18, who was 17 at the time, was convicted of Antonio’s murder in August 2013 and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole. His alleged accomplice, Dominique Lang, 16, who was 15 at the time, is awaiting his day in court.
Former Mayor Bryan Thompson, an Old Town resident, said he was with 10 Brunswick High School students that morning, whom he described as the antithesis of the kind of teenager Elkins proved to be. The teenagers he was with were at Old City Hall, on Newcastle Street, conducting a mock city commission meeting as part of Government Day, when Thompson heard the news. He was stunned.
“My first reaction was that this sort of thing doesn’t happen here,” he said.
But it had. A now convicted teenager had pushed Brunswick into the news around the world, Thompson said.
And the news hit home for people everywhere.
“There was such a strong reaction to this, not just in Brunswick, but across the state and across the country,” Thompson remembers.
Finding anything positive from the brazen, daylight murder of a baby is difficult, and Thompson is not sure he is ready to say he has found one.
If there is anything that can be said of it, it is that police and city residents have a more open relationship now than they did. Thompson thinks people are more willing to call police to report suspicious activity than they were previously.
The way the community came together for memorials in honor of Antonio, attended town hall meetings to express their feelings and came out for a healing citywide block party just days after the murder showed Thompson that Brunswick and Glynn County are resilient.
“Those types of events are so important for a community. They were like an exhalation,” Thompson said.
The Rev. Dawn Mayes, pastor of First Presbyterian Church on Union Street in Old Town, organized a service of hope and healing at her church a few days after the murder. More than 200 people attended.
In the days and weeks after, Mayes saw the same resiliency in city residents as Thompson.
“Some of my church members said friends outside the church urged them not to go deliver groceries (during a monthly delivery to low-income senior citizens), because of fear of crime, but we had more volunteers come out than ever before,” she said.
In the past year, Mayes says she has seen that spirit of helping play out time and again, proving that one terrible crime does not define her city.
“There is a wonderful spirit of unity and caring in this city. We still grieve the loss of Antonio, but we remember him best when we live as neighbors with one another,” Mayes said.
For West, though, the wounds will take much longer to heal.
“It’s hard to think something good can come from this,” she said this week, “because my baby is still gone.”
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