SIDE STREETS: Valentine's a day of mourning for last of Three Musketeers

William Fortune doesn’t much look forward to Valentine’s Day.

He’ll tell his girlfriend he loves her and all. But Feb. 14 doesn’t represent love and romance to William.

To him, it’s a terribly sad day. It represents the end of the Three Musketeers.

Fifteen years ago, late on Valentine’s Day 1997, his buddies _ 13-year-old Andy Westbay and 15-year-old Scott Hawrysiak _ were gunned down as they walked home from playing video games with a friend.

William was supposed to be with them. They did everything together. Their folks even called them the Three Musketeers.

All for one.

“They were my two best friends,” William said last week. “I can’t think about Valentine’s Day as a day of love. I associate it with the deaths of my two best friends.

“It’s a day of mourning.”

And a day to wonder what might have been.

William knows that if his mother hadn’t been too sick to take him that night, he’d have been walking with Andy and Scott when Jeron Grant, 17, and Gary Flakes, 16, drove up to them on Canoe Creek Drive in Cheyenne Meadows.

According to Flakes’ confession to police, he was driving Grant to their homes on Fort Carson when they saw Andy and Scott.

Grant told Flakes he wanted to kill someone “to get something off my chest.” He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun out of the backseat, got out, said a few words to the boys and opened fire.

The first blast hit Andy in the neck. Scott ran as the shotgun erupted two more times, hitting Scott in the back of the head.

The killers drove off leaving Andy and Scott to die.

But neither was convicted of first-degree murder. Jurors, instead, convicted them of the lesser charge of accessory to murder.

Grant was freed on parole in 2008. But a year later he was caught with crack cocaine and sent back to prison for six years.

Flakes went to a halfway house in 2010, was paroled in 2011 and is free now.

He volunteers for Colorado Juvenile Defenders Coalition’s effort to stop prosecution of juveniles as adults.

Flakes also testified before state lawmakers last spring about the evils of solitary confinement.

Such activity rankles William, now 29, a college graduate and personal trainer who twice went to Iraq as a civilian contractor.

The last Musketeer has never forgotten his pals.

“I think about them everyday,” said William, who has tattoos with Andy’s and Scott’s  initials on his arms, each with a star.

“They are my nautical stars for guidance,” he said. “I go to their graves every time I come home.”

He’s glad Grant is back in prison. And he’s angry Flakes seems to portray himself as a victim in some way of unfair treatment.

“They ruthlessly murdered two kids,” William said, still loyal to his friends. “They should never be free.”

One for all. Forever.

—

Please Friend me on Facebook and follow my Tweets on Twitter