The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 26

eoin VD05 The Indianapolis Star SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1987 70 Section Young killer awaits decision on his life Dan Carpenter Dennis Wayne Brown reflects on history of broken dreams ri By WILLIAM E. ANDERSON STAH STAFF WHITER Dennis Wayne Brown wants to marry and have a family after he gets a decent job. Dreams of an average 20-year-old? No. Just hopeless daydreams of a killer. At best.

Brown can look forward to a life In prison. At worst, the electric chair. Dennis Wayne Brown never had much going for him, and he blew what few chances he had. His youthful features belie a past filled with failure and crime. He may not look the part, but he's a convicted killer awaiting his sentence.

His crime was an execution-type slaying of two men. said Deputy Prosecutor Brian F. Jennings at Brown's trial, which ended last Sunday in Marion Superior Court. Both victims were shot in the back of the head at close range, and one had multiple stab wounds. A Jury of eight men and four women found Brown guilty of two counts of murder and theft, and one each of burglary, auto theft and having an unlicensed handgun.

The Jury could not decide if Brown should die in the electric chair for the July 1986 slayings of Charles E. Hoskinson. 37. and Thomas E. Felts.

22, in the carriage house apartment the three shared at 5432 University Avenue. Hoskinson, owner of a window cleaning company, had befriended Brown, given him a job and allowed him to live in the apartment. The death penalty decision is now up to Judge Roy F. Jones of Criminal Division, Room 5. The decision will come after a sentencing hearing on Sept.

30. Brown, at best, faces 100 years in prison. It was learned the jury voted 9-3 for the death penalty, but a unanimous decision was needed to make that recommendation to the Judge. By law. Jones can impose the death penalty even without a jury recommendation.

Brown is awaiting Jones' decision at the Marion County Jail in Ccllblock 4-T. The once clean-shaven, boyish face the jury saw See DECISION Page 13 STAR STAFF PHOTO Convicted murderer Dennis Wayne Brown. Highway honors fallen workers Homebound program gets high marks from teachers By SCOTT L. MILEY STAR STAFF WRITER Sonia Shepard was paralyzed from the neck down after she was struck by a car five years ago. That has hardly halted her education.

This year, the 15-year-old Is taking three classes at Northwest High School and two at home. "Without the homebound program, she would get behind," says her mother, Mary. "I think she needs it to keep up with school." The sophomore is one of eight students signed up so far this year for Indianapolis Public Schools' homebound student program, which last year served 500 students. Most of the students have medical problems that keep them out of school for four weeks or more. About 80 of the students received instruction in their homes; others are schooled in area hospitals with an average stay of six to eight weeks.

IPS, as most school districts, also is responsible for teaching patients who are from other school districts but recuperating in hospitals within IPS boundaries. When AIDS victim Ryan White stays at Riley Hospital for Children, he receives IPS instruction. The transfer of tuition from the home district traditionally covers the program cost. It also is the most common way the programs are funded. Sending a teacher to help a student is nothing new.

but there was a time IPS and other districts used telephone hook-ups to transmit education. Transmission quality was poor and it was difficult to find someone to carry the transmitting device between classes for students, says Mary Jo Chaney. IPS' special education supervisor of related services. "The program is much more accountable." she says. "There was a time when homebound first began that we had two or three homebound teachers.

The problem was the caseload varies and It was very difficult to find teachers who could teach everyone from severely profound special education students to gifted high school seniors taking advance chemistry." Barry Olshin. 45, taught Sonia during her See TEACHERS Page 10 Pope draws a Hoosier into rite of family Miami I was so wired from lack of sleep and so dazed from those avalanches of rain, I couldn't be quite sure what I was seeing and hearing. Even at my most lucid, though. It would have seemed like a scene from a dream. A quarter of a million people, from gray-haired women clutching rosaries to teen-age couples holding hands, formed an ocean all around me.

Riotous waves of umbrellas, slickers, plastic sheeting, yellow papal souvenir caps, ycl-low-and-white papal flags and red-white-and-blue Cuban flags churned to the horizons on three sides. Ahead of me. against the widest, ugliest charcoal sky I'd ever seen, rose the 10-story white cross made of steel girders, fitfully aglow with lightning. On a monumental stage next to it, 30 feet above us and hundreds of yards away, stood the miniaturized green-clad figure of Pope John Paul II. A priest in white held an umbrella over him as he spoke.

Behind him stood a row of giant palm trees, the classic Symbol of south Florida but so exotic to an outsider that it might have been an African or Polynesian setting. Whipped and choked by the torrential rain and the terrifying lightning, the pontiffs nasal voice kept soaring out to the sea of soaked over the speaker towers. "My brah-ders end sees-ders When he was forced to stop (he, like the towers, was a lightning rod), silence fell over the vast expanse of people and lawn chairs and coolers and mud and garbage. Then it came, starting with the official choir near the stage and spreading through the crowd like wind over waves. Softly, rippling like a gentle rain and yet defying this cloudburst that was bending us double.

Alleluia, alle-lo-o-o-o-y-a-a-a The singing lasted only a few minutes, giving way to a mass cry of disbelief when Archbishop Edward A. McCarthy announced the Mass was cancelled. Nature would not heed. El Papa was gone. "You are beautiful." the archbishop told the throng.

They didn't want to hear it. They wanted the pope. Papa!" a middle-aged behind me moaned. over and over, like a lost child. "Viva Papa!" For some time before that.

I had been having my own problems. I was fighting a desperate battle to protect my notebooks, my tape recorder, my wallet and my" underwear from a downpour that pelted me like rotten grapefruit. I wondered If I'd ever get out of there to use whatever information survived. Seeing in my wretched form the least of their needy brethren, three girls, maybe 12 to 14 years old, invited me under 'their already overcrowded umbrella. It was not put forth a noble gesture.

They seemed excited, at this epic and miserable moment, to meet someone from faraway Indiana. I got a stiff neck from stoop-; Ing under the little umbrella, and everything below my neck got wet anyway. But it was an ideal place from which to witness it all their anticipation, their joy, their grief and finally their acceptance as the drama rose and fell. Alleluia, alleluia In Miami, the pope's visit was a Latin American communal rite that the rest of us. regardless of religious faith or lack of it.

could only envy. Thanks to my three friends. I could feel like a participant for a little while. You had to be there, seeing and hearing and on the verge of panic, to know how important that is. By GEORGE STUTEVILLE STAR STAFF WRITER More metallic signs will sprout Monday on the ugly snarl of highways wrapping around.

East Chicago. These signs will be put up on Ind. 912, known as the Cline Avenue Extension. These signs will rename the 5. 7-mlIe extension as the Highway Workers Memorial Highway an all-weather tribute to 13 construction workers who died when three sections of a bridge ramp fell 50 feet on the morning of April 15, 1982.

Five years later, many people from around Hobart, Gary and Hammond need no more reminders. They are related to or knew the people who died or the 17 that were hurt some perma nently. Rod Warren gets his reminder every morning when he straps a metal and plastic leg to the stump that the accident made at his right knee. Rather than signs or dedication ceremonies planned by two state senators Monday, the 34-year-old Hobart man would prefer another type of compensation for his loss. "To me, it is a farce they do this and keep the laws the way they are.

The working man would much rather see workmen's compensation laws changed than have a highway that is a memorial to him," said Warren in a telephone Interview Saturday. Warren said he was unable to work for two years following the accident. His $600-a-week salary as a construction worker toppled to $150 a week as a recipient of workmen's compensation. That was the first year. The second year it was $75 a week.

In that time, he had eight surgeries to repair his leg where it could be fitted for a prosthesis. In 1984, he was able to return to his Job at Superior Construction where he was working at the time of the accident. "I was Just living to work. I was trying to do like was I doing before, being too aggressive about It. I guess I was determined to prove myself." By April 1987.

the demands of the job were too much. The strain of physical labor In rough construction sites caused the end of the stump to deteriorate. He had to quit. Warren has since retrained himself as a real estate agent. Realizing that his career as a construction worker was about to end, he took classes In Valpa- See HIGHWAY Page 5 1 STAR STAFF PHOTO JEFF ATTEBERRY Barry Olshin tutors Sonia Shepard as she lays in bed beneath a net full of stuffed animals.

Constitution fever hits peak this week Organizers hope hoopla is just the beginning Indianapolis events Wednesday: Patriotic music and program, Pledge of Allegiance, Minton-Capehart Federal Building, begins at' noon. Thursday: Program begins at noon on the main floor of the Indiana State-house. Bell ringing at 3 p.m. mission on the Bicentennial Is shaping plans through 1991. Extending the celebration over five years will match the genesis of the document, from its drafting and ratification by the states to the creation of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the Constitution in 1791.

"Hopefully. Sept. 17 will be a klckoff Instead of a halt to our activities." said Melody G. Singer, assistant director of the commission. "I don't think people stop and think that it was Just the beginning." Among plans are a 1988 ratification ball.

That activity is be ing underwritten nationwide by Merrill Lynch Co. Indiana has chosen to mark the ratification of the Constitution in December 1988 because December is the month statehood came In 1816. But first Indiana and the nation will salute the signing of the Constitution this week. Some communities will have activities beginning today. But the exuberance will edge toward crescendo Wednesday when schools all across Indiana and the nation take part in a daylong "Celebration of Citizen-See FEVER Page 16 By FRED D.

CAVINOER STAR STAFF WRITER The bicentennial of the United States Constitution will be celebrated with much hoopla this week, but it's only the beginning. Thursday is the focus of most of the week's celebrating as that is the date the Constitution was signed by its framers 200 years ago Sept. 17, 1776. Communities all across Indiana and the nation will let loose with bell-ringing and balloon launches at 3 p.m. (local time) to mark the exact moment the document was signed.

But Wednesday will be a big day, too, as President Reagan In a nationally televised program leads the nation in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the Constitution. Meanwhile, the Indiana Com Blanford residents hope to shake up Peabody in battle against mine blasts Tested mi bt ''hi- lif) HUNTING VfV 14- TRESPASSING Committee, the group that sought legal assistance. Twelve years ago, when John Volk retired from his Job in Gary, he decided to return to the land here that had been In his family for three generations. "My family has owned this land since 1906, and everything I worked for is in that house. But settling here was a bad mistake," he said, pointing to the home he built that is now adjacent to the strip mine.

Volk is disturbed by dust that turns his brown roof gray when the wind is out of the south and windows that rattle when the company sets off dynamite See BLASTS Page 5 They also complain about noise levels and health hazards associated with dust that hangs in the air from mining. Late last week, an attorney returned with assistants and began collecting evidence to prepare for filing a lawsuit within 60 days. While most litigants are from this west-central Indiana community near the Illinois state line, some live in other nearby areas affected by the mining operations. "I tried to tell Peabody they had to do something for four years, but they wouldn't negotiate," said John V. Albrecht, chairman of the Blanford Action By SUSAN CRITTENDEN STAR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Blanford, Ind.

It has taken four years, but residents here who've been rocked by strip mine blasts and covered with dust finally believe they can get relief with help from some high-powered Georgia lawyers who specialize in environmental law. Attorneys from the Atlanta firm came to town earlier this month and signed contracts with clients for a lawsuit against Pea-body Coal Co. Residents claim that blasting at the mine has caused serious structural damage to many area homes. STAR STAFF PHOTO John Volk's signs don't protect him from mine blasts..