Pubdate: Fri, 20 Jan 2006
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/submit.asp
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265
Author: Jim Stingl

TRAGEDY DIDN'T WAKE UP TROUBLED STORE OWNER

The shop that neighbors call "the blue store" has seen more than its 
share of heartbreak and trouble. A shrine to a dead 15-year-old boy 
right inside the front door is evidence of that.

Its real name, Hopkins One Stop, bears a darkly humorous irony now. 
You get your bread, your milk, your marijuana, all at one convenient location.

Vice squad police raided the store at 4703 N. Hopkins St. this week 
and arrested owner Aubrey Hubanks and a clerk. And the city now is in 
a full-court press to declare the place a nuisance.

People have been complaining to the cops about the store. "They said 
there was drug-dealing over the meat counter," Lt. Robert Stelter 
said. An undercover officer bought pot at the store and it was indeed 
over the meat counter, he said.

Other marijuana, packaged in small plastic bags for quick sale, was 
seized from the store and an apartment upstairs.

Trouble has returned.

This is the same store where last March, Hubanks' two sons got hold 
of a .45-caliber handgun kept behind the counter. While trying to 
unload the gun, the 13-year-old son shot his 15-year-old brother, 
Aubrey Jr., in the neck. The boy died.

"We miss you now, our hearts are sore," says a poem that hangs on a 
piece of cardboard here alongside photos of the smiling boy.

The gun wasn't supposed to be there because the boys' father is a 
convicted felon in a 1983 armed burglary case. Neither were the 56 
bags of marijuana priced at $10 to $20 each, all tucked into a cigar 
box behind the counter, according to a criminal complaint.

In the midst of his grief over the loss of a son, Aubrey Hubanks was 
charged with two felonies. That case is still winding through the courts.

You'd think this would have been a huge wake-up call for him. This 
week's drug raid suggests otherwise. Even the city garbage can on the 
sidewalk outside seems to mock him with its stenciled message that 
"Drugs are trash."

I tried without success to interview Hubanks or his wife. I can tell 
you that when he was busted the first time, he told police he sells 
pot to pay medical bills. He wasn't peddling cocaine and so he did 
not consider himself a drug dealer, the criminal complaint says.

That's something, I suppose, but it's a felony either way. And 
selling out of your business - man, that's risky.

As I said, this time the city and the police have teamed up to hammer 
the blue store as a nuisance. Five television news photographers 
crowded in as a city inspector slapped a notice on the building this 
week, calling it "unfit for human habitation." Photos purporting to 
show rotten food, bad wiring and other code violations were handed 
out to reporters.

A criminal complaint is expected to be signed today charging Hubanks 
with felony bail jumping and drug possession. The clerk faces a 
drug-dealing charge; he's accused of selling the pot to the officer.

Hubanks' lawyer, Bridget Boyle, said the boy's death was "the saddest 
thing ever," but she cautioned me about blaming it on drug activity 
at the store. Many shop owners and tavern-keepers in the city keep a 
gun for protection, she said.

The younger brother was charged as a juvenile, but the case was 
dropped, to be handled informally by the probation department. The 
real punishment for his act is the agony that began the instant the 
gun went off.

"I hope the father learns a lesson from this," Children's Court Judge 
Mary Triggiano said as she dismissed charges against the boy in May.

Hubanks was in the courtroom when she said it. Right now, he's 
sitting in jail, probably wishing the lesson had sunk in a little better.