Violence ingrained on streets, skin

He forever wears the dates of their deaths on his arm.

The five tattoos extend upward for several inches from Braddock Mayor John Fetterman's right wrist. Each is a permanent reminder of people who have met violent ends in the borough since he became mayor in January 2006.

Some were good, some were not. Some he knew, some he didn't.

But in this small, poverty-pockmarked community of about 3,000 along the Monongahela River, Fetterman usually had at least a passing acquaintance with friends or family members the deceased left behind.

"This isn't a vanity thing for me," said Fetterman, 38, a Harvard graduate. "It's a personal inventory that allows a way for me to properly document these people who have been felled by violence."

01.16.06

Moments after delivering a pizza to a Camp Avenue home, Christopher Williams, 36, was shot during an apparent robbery attempt.

He left behind a wife and 12-year-old daughter. A $25,000 reward for information on his killer remains unclaimed.

"It was a senseless crime that affected me deeply," Fetterman said. "Here was a guy that was my age, had a family and was just trying to do his job."

Shortly after the slaying, the idea cemented itself in Fetterman's mind. He went to a Lawrenceville tattoo parlor and had the date of Williams' death etched into his skin.

"I think a lot of tattoos are superfluous," Fetterman said. "If you are going to get one, I think it should have meaning. Mr. Williams' death had great meaning to me."

So did the ones that followed.

10.08.06

Riyaad Partlow, 23, was shot during a late-night argument on Corey Avenue. In March, charges were dropped against a Swissvale man initially accused of killing him.

12.04.06

Hours after a man was shot while fleeing a botched home invasion attempt on Comrie Avenue, Thomas Leron Royster, 39, was found dead in a Penn Hills cemetery of a gunshot wound.

02.03.07

The frozen body of Nyia Page, 23 months, was discovered in a wooded area near her home. The girl's father, William Page, 24, is accused of leaving her outside to die after growing angry because she kept taking off her diaper.

12.12.07

Ian Siebert, 22, whom Fetterman knew personally, was shot multiple times in the middle of the afternoon on Camp Street.

Considering what Fetterman called Braddock's reputation as "the wild, wild west, where we have all these shoot-'em-ups," the mayor believes the list of death dates he wears is relatively small.

"Braddock certainly is a much safer place than it once was," he said. "But these dates still represent a sad testimony of man's inhumanity to man."

"Safer" not necessarily being "safe," that testimony unfortunately is likely to continue in Braddock. So is Fetterman's unusual ritual of simultaneously remembering the fallen while reminding himself just how far his community still has to go.

"When I got my first tattoo, people kind of joked around and told me, 'You keep doing that, you're going to run out of arm,' " he said.

"We'll see."