Friday, September 29, 2000

Neighbors decry house as 'nuisance'

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Avondale advocates say drugs dealt where homeowner was shot, killed

By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        The Avondale house a man died trying to protect is back in the news, this time as a public safety hazard.

Tim'Naizha Ward, 5 (front) eats part of her dinner in front of the house where James Hillman lived. On the porch are Tim'Naizha's mother Marquisa Harmon and children Antonio Ward, 6, Jaquanna Harmon, 9, Tania Harmon, 8, and Mon'Tierre Allen, 3. (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        The same kind of loiterers James Hillman was trying to shoo away from his Burnet Avenue house when he was shot there in March still hang in front. That infuriates neighborhood activists, who have worked for years to rid the street of drug dealers. They say crack deals go down openly in front of the place.

        “This is a public nuisance,” said Tom Jones, chairman of the neighborhood's Community Public Safety Advocate Group. “It's not helping our plan to finish cleaning up Burnet Avenue.”

        He and others lobbied police for help. Officers last week ordered the tenants in the three apartments, living there without running water, out. They didn't leave immediately, saying it took time to find new places to live.

        The house itself has fallen into disrepair — broken miniblinds hang in second-floor windows, while the first-floor window is broken out.

        Depending on whom you ask, the condition of the place is blamed on the tenants or on Mr. Hillman's sister, Deborah Starr, the executor of his estate. Tenants say they pay their rent; Mr. Jones says Ms. Starr hasn't gotten any money lately.

        As leader of a group that has spent years cracking down on the drug trade by fighting for things like surveillance cameras at near by intersections, Mr. Jones just wants it cleaned up.

        “We're not going to let this man's death go in vain,” he said.

        All agree that it's a sad legacy for a man who tried hard to work on his property in a neighborhood where not everybody has that kind of ambition. Mr. Hillman, 33, was assistant to the head chef at the Cincinnati Country Club.

       

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