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by David Forbes On May 8, Stuart Peterson and two other men robbed the F&J Food Mart on Biltmore Avenue at gunpoint. A witness to the gangrelated heist described their vehicle to police, and all three were soon caught and charged with armed robbery. It was Peterson’s first felony arrest. But those who know the 20-year-old Asheville resident report that in the ensuing months, something unusual happened: Peterson got his life straight. “He had done better since his arrest than he had in years,” his mother, Michelle Peterson, told Xpress. “We had some difficult times when he was younger — he didn’t want to work; he wanted to run the streets. But since he’d gotten into trouble, he’d changed so much: how he handled situations, his maturity. He knew what he had done was wrong. He had completely turned his life around.” Peterson began seeing a therapist, entered a substance-abuse treatment program and started working with Asheville Green Opportunities, a nonprofit that places unemployed youth in green jobs. Those who worked alongside him say he became a model leader, contributing to various projects around the area. “He was so excited about being an architect, about trying to build greener homes,” his mother recalls, and he was planning to weatherize their own apartment. Peterson also made presentations to juvenile offenders, urging them to stay away from the lifestyle he had once embraced. “I was moved by the number of juveniles who indicated to me that they wanted to make better choices after listening to Stuart speak,” Kimberly Simpkins, a juvenile-justice counselor who observed two of Peterson’s presentations, wrote in a letter pleading for leniency in his case. Co-workers, who note that Peterson was part of an “extended family” at Asheville GO, say the tales of his former life were hard to believe.
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14 DECEMBER 2 - DECEMBER 8, 2009 • mountainx.com
A new leaf: Stuart Peterson, center, with fellow Asheville GO member Miguel Newsom (left) and co-director Dan Leroy during a recent sustainable agriculture field trip. photo courtesy of Asheville GO
“I knew he’d done some bad stuff,” GO member Kelvin Bonilla recalls. “But Stu was cool; he was this laid-back guy. I cannot see him going in and robbing someone, and then I heard that’s what he had gotten in trouble for. Definitely he’d changed so much.” During Peterson’s Nov. 19 trial, seven people testified to Superior Court Judge James Downs about the defendant’s redemption. In addition to family members, they included his therapist; GO co-founder Dan Leroy; a juvenile whom Peterson had helped; and Detective Louis
Tomasetti of the Western North Carolina Gang Task Force. But apparently, Judge Downs wasn’t moved. Although he did rule that Peterson’s “local support network” and acceptance of responsibility for his crime were mitigating factors, he still sent the young man to prison for 44 months. “It was a really unexpected decision,” says his mother, who now wears a black shirt proclaiming “Free Stuart Peterson!” While her son had accepted that he’d have to do time, she’d figured that his post-arrest efforts would be
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