Remembering Ethan

The Jacobs had just arrived at their destination and were settling in for a Memorial Day weekend getaway in 2007 when Cathie's mother called with the news: Their son Ethan had been shot in the parking lot near his houseboat at the McKellar Lake marina and was in critical condition.

The couple sped back to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. Ethan, 31 years old, died at 2:30 the next afternoon from organ damage and internal bleeding caused by the gunshot wound.

And just like that, the rock that was the Jacobs family began to crack.

Three years after his son's death, Alan Jacobs, a geologist, looked from his recliner to the box of igneous matter sitting on the breakfast table. Rocks were strewn about the Jacobs' single-story home on a quiet street in East Memphis. Gneiss, a granite rock transformed by heat and pressure, shared a space on the mantle with a picture of Ethan, a broad-shouldered man with glasses, neatly cropped brown hair and a goatee.

"The MED did a wonderful job, but you know, it was too much damage to his body," Alan said, taking long pauses. "I had to make the call for them to take him off life support."

Alan said that day was a nightmare. Ethan had an exuberant, "larger-than-life" personality, his mother said. An active person, he preferred hard labor to homework and hopped around from one job to the next: plumbing, construction, sales and security. He enjoyed being near the water and got his license to work on barges in the Mississippi River, but Cathie said he was like an elephant on a tree trunk when he tried to jump from barge to barge.

When he moved to a houseboat on McKellar Lake, his parents noted their concern for his safety in the downtown area. But Ethan had lived in more dangerous places, including Israel, where, his grandmother proudly noted, he once helped pull people out of a burning synagogue.

Born in Texas, Ethan moved with his family to Memphis after he finished 11th grade. The football coach at White Station High School spotted Ethan on his first day and begged him to join the team, but sports weren't really Ethan's cup of tea.

Instead, he became involved with his synagogue, Baron Hirsch, and hoped to create a place in Memphis for Jewish singles. His parents created a fund in his name through the Memphis Jewish Foundation, and Cathie said they plan to use some of the money on projects that Ethan dreamed up but will never have a chance to fully realize.

Cathie and Alan said news of Ethan's murder shook the Jewish community.

"Things like this generally don't happen in a community like this," Alan said. "The outpouring at the funeral was overwhelming."

The Jacobs, a strongly religious family, turned to the structure of the Jewish mourning process to cope with their loss. The first week was an intense period of mourning, known as Shiva, during which the family members removed themselves from society. For the next 23 days, called Shloshim, mourners still observed restrictions to facilitate the process in accordance with their religion. For a year following Ethan's death, the Jacobs adhered to certain mourning guidelines, studying the Torah and praying for Ethan with family members.

The pain slowly and slightly began to fade, but it was replaced by a new sensation. The fire of activism was lit in Cathie's heart and began to blaze.

"It was just … I had to do something," Cathie explained, tears streaming down her cheeks.

And so, in a state where any law dealing with guns is a hot-button issue, the family entered the political landscape. Pain was their motivation — the Jacobs saw advocacy as their chance to make a difference in the community that had shown them so much support in the months following Ethan's death.

"If this prevents somebody else from getting killed, then yes, it is worth the fight," Alan said.

* * *

After going out on Beale Street on May 27, 2007, around midnight, Ethan was walking with a friend through a dark parking lot by his houseboat when an unfamiliar car approached. The Jacobs said Ethan's killer asked him if he "had it," and shots rang out before Ethan could ask what the driver was talking about. Police told the media it was an apparent robbery, but the Jacobs family said Ethan still had his wallet on him after the incident. Cathie speculated that it was a gang initiation or maybe a random act of violence — senseless in either case.

A past president of the Memphis chapter of Hadassah, Cathie turned to the Jewish women's organization to help guide her activist efforts. The Memphis Hadassah chapter scheduled three forums to "educate, motivate and activate" the community. Each forum consisted of a panel with a member of the police force, a judge and a victim's family member.

The forums helped connect Cathie with a larger network of Memphis activists who had similar stories and priorities. The strong relationship between the Jewish and African-American communities — dating to the Civil Rights Era — bound Hadassah to local grassroots organizations, such as Operation Safe Communities and Freedom from Unnecessary Negatives.

"We are supportive and constantly collaborating," said Rosalind Moore, who co-founded FFUN with her husband, Stevie, after their son Prentice was killed in 2003 leaving the now-defunct "Denim and Diamonds" nightclub in Memphis.

"We work not only on a local level but actively engage with other communities," she said. "My husband is aware of legislation in the state, and having his expertise helps drive where we focus."

In January 2008, several groups came together to focus on the Tennessee General Assembly, and a busload headed to Nashville eight months after Ethan's death. The demonstrators were to carry signs with pictures of their lost loved ones.

On the nearly three-hour ride from Memphis to the Tennessee Capitol, people took turns walking to the front of the bus and telling their stories. It was emotional, the Jacobs said, and when they arrived in Nashville, Ethan's family — his mom and dad, his sister, his grandmother — found the courage to share their experience with legislators they'd never met.

"We just sort of wanted to put a human face to the cause," said Rena Jacobs, Ethan's younger sister.

Lobbying under the auspices of the Tennessee Public Safety Coalition, the Jacobs urged lawmakers to pass a package of seven bills that the group said would help reduce gun-related crimes.

One bill proposed harsher penalties for people found in possession of handguns after being convicted of felonies involving the use of force or a deadly weapon. Another bill would eliminate parole for aggravated robbery, and yet another would provide tougher sentences for crimes involving handguns. Other bills sought greater resources for prosecutors and tougher penalties for drivers caught operating vehicles under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The group had limited success in Nashville, Alan said. A few of the bills passed, and others were tabled. When TPSC returned this February, they brought up many of the same bills.

Attempting to persuade legislators with statistics, TPSC turned to 2006 FBI crime data that listed Tennessee as the state with the second-highest violent crime rate in the nation, with 760.2 per 100,000 residents, second only to South Carolina. In 2007, Tennessee was ranked seventh in the nation in firearm-related deaths by the Violence Policy Center, an advocate for gun control.

But statistics weren't enough to win over the legislature, and Alan said he thought it was partly because the group's message was drowned out by the strong coalition of gun rights advocates pushing their own agenda in the capitol around the same time.

"We tried to make it abundantly clear that we are not trying to lobby for gun control, but it's a hot-button topic, and people get really sensitive — they get worked up into a fervor," Rena said. "Meanwhile, people are suffering because (gun rights advocates) aren't willing to concede. It's not really a concession, but for them, everything leads to taking away the right to have weapons, which is unfortunate."

***

In 2009, the Tennessee legislature passed a series of laws backed by gun lobbyists, including two controversial bills that allow handgun-carry permit holders to bring guns into public parks and restaurants that serve alcohol. Gun rights issues also dominated the final weeks of the 2010 gubernatorial race, and Republican Bill Haslam said people should be allowed to keep their guns locked in their vehicles at work, regardless of their employers' policies about having firearms on the property. In the last week of the race, Haslam told the Tennessee Firearms Association that if a bill abolishing the current handgun-carry permit system passed in the legislature, he would sign it into law.

Haslam won the election.

Shelby County commissioner and University of Memphis associate law professor Steve Mulroy said it was evident that the gun lobby had a stronghold in state government, even though the gun lobbyists' views are not proportionally reflected in the state's citizenry.

"I think it is pretty clear — polls show and common sense shows that most people don't like the idea of guns in bars and parks, yet the legislature passed those laws," Mulroy said. "It shows that the lobby is extremely powerful. It doesn't really matter what popular view is because it's not unpopular enough that people will vote you out of office for it, so I believe the legislature is knowingly going against what constituents would want."

A poll released by Middle Tennessee State University in October 2009 found that most Tennesseans disagreed with the gun rights laws now in effect in the state. Eighty percent of state residents opposed allowing permit holders to carry handguns in bars, 54 percent opposed guns in parks and 60 percent opposed them in restaurants. The Tennessee Newspaper Network conducted a poll this summer with similar results. Seven in 10 voters said they opposed the law to allow handguns in restaurants that serve alcohol.

Opponents of gun control say the polls aren't an accurate assessment because people may not realize that gun owners still cannot legally drink alcohol while carrying their weapons, even though they can now bring guns into establishments where alcohol is served.

Shelby County issued the highest number of permits, 14,389, to carry a handgun in the state in 2009. Knox County was next with 7,869, and Davidson came in third at 7,348. The highest number of handgun carry permit suspensions, revocations and denials also went to Shelby County, with 143, translating to about one in every 100 permits issued in the county. Most of the people who bought guns were men — at a 3:1 ratio — and most were between 56 and 60 years old.

Mike Gideon, 54, is a Tennessee resident and handgun-permit carrier. He said he tends to side with gun rights advocates and thinks that gun owners are the strongest deterrent to violent crime. He said victims of violent crimes misplace their efforts by focusing on gun laws.

"The debate on gun control always starts with a story like this," he said in an e-mail, referring to the Jacobs' experience. "If this happened to one of my family members, and I wasn't so close to the gun control issue, my first instinct would be to eliminate the guns. The fact is … the gun didn't kill their son. It was an available tool. Deadly force killed their son."

Alan Jacobs doesn't own a gun, but he said he respects a person's constitutional right to bear arms. Yet someone was able to drive up to Ethan, say two words and end his life. Jacobs said current laws make it too easy for criminals to get their hands on the deadliest weapons available.

Gideon, a member of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shooting range in Nashville and the owner of 20 guns, said punishment for violent crime shouldn't depend on the criminals' accoutrements of choice.

"I'm all for maximizing penalties for violent crime of any kind. I'm not for passing irrational, over-the-top gun control laws that penalize law-abiding citizens and do little or nothing to prevent violent crime," he wrote in an e-mail. "Should there be severe penalties for violent crime? Absolutely. Should murder by gun have a stiffer penalty than murder by tire tool? I'm not so sure."

Many gun owners say that gun control laws don't actually control criminals — many of whom use illegal means to obtain weapons — and law-abiding citizens pay the price.

"Criminals will always have firearms," said Adam, an Arkansas resident who works in Memphis and requested that his last name not be published. "Somebody will steal a gun. That person will commit a crime and turn around and sell it."

Adam owns 10 guns but hasn't gotten a handgun-carry permit yet because, he said, the process is time-consuming. Tennessee's requirements include paying $115 in application fees, undergoing a background check and taking a shooting class. Data from 2009 showed that it took an average of 70 days for applicants to obtain a handgun-carry permit in the Volunteer State.

Whether Ethan's killer obtained his weapon lawfully or not is an unanswerable question, as police are still hunting for a suspect.

The search for Ethan's killer stretched on for months following Ethan's shooting, while the family was sitting Shiva and observing Shloshim. However, Ethan happened to be killed on one of the bloodiest weekends in Memphis history: The homicide unit was working six separate murders that occurred over the span of four days.

However, about a month after Ethan's death, police had a suspect in custody. Ethan's friend, a key witness in the case, was asked to identify the killer from a set of photographs. The witness said he recognized the man and pointed to the photograph of a 5-foot-10, 240-pound 20 year old.

The man from the photograph was arraigned. Another month passed, and the witness was asked to identify the same man from the photograph in a human lineup. Ethan's friend couldn't positively identify the suspect, and the charge was dropped.

Years passed, and Ethan's file was classified as a cold case. In 2009, the District Attorney's office, coupled with private donations from a member of the Jewish community, offered $10,000 for clues that could lead police to the perpetrator, a man the Jacobs family would like to see put in prison for the rest of his life.

"There is a fellow out there who has no regard for society's laws ... or life," Alan said. "And that's scary."

It has been hard for the Jacobs to find a sense of closure while still believing their son's killer is out on the streets. But Rena, who is now 30 years old, started a blog to help deal with her brother's murder and to support her parents' efforts. "Remembering Ethan," hosted on blogspot.com, has hosted more than 12,000 viewers. A picture of Ethan giving Rena a bear hug greets new visitors each day.

"You can leave a comment, and sometimes they come from people I've never met," Rena said. "But they find the blog somehow, somewhere. I don't visit often because it's too painful to go and read the stories that people leave.

And so a website has become Rena's container for memories of Ethan. Her mom, Cathie, keeps a folder for hers. From it, she pulled out a spare flyer that featured a picture of Ethan, sitting with his arms folded across his lap. He wears a white polo shirt and an easy smile — the look on his face suggesting the picture was snapped mid-chuckle. Other smiling children and teenagers share space on the page.

"Please honor our memory by supporting anti-crime legislation," the flyer reads. "We are the faces of homicide in Tennessee."