Detained and Confused

By Bobby Cuza

Juvenile detention center isn't all bad, says Mitchell Johnson, one of the two boys in jail for the Jonesboro, Ark., shootings that killed five people in March 1998. He gets to watch Jerry Springer, eat fast food, use the gym one night a week and listen to his favorite rap song, Shoot 'Em Up, by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Still, the realities of life in confinement are beginning to dawn on Johnson, who turns 15 this week. "I will never go to a prom. I won't have sex or kiss for seven years, almost eight," he wrote in a letter to ex-schoolmate Colby Brooks. "Why?"

The gravity of the shootings only confuses Johnson--as evidenced by the series of letters to Brooks aired on NBC last week. "I honestly didn't want anyone to get hurt," he wrote. "You may not think of it like this, but I have the same pain y'all have. I lost friends like you did. The only difference is, I was the one doing the killing."

Johnson says he doesn't know why he and Andrew Golden, now 12, carried out the massacre. Though the crime was clearly premeditated, Johnson told a court he thought they would just shoot over everyone's head. His mother, Gretchen Woodard, said he didn't learn who'd been shot until three weeks later. "When he was told, I remember his head hitting the table and sobbing and the tears rolling from his eyes," Woodard told NBC News. So why did he do it? Johnson's letters offer only a terrifying lack of self-knowledge: "I was not mad at anyone. I was honestly happy. I had a very loving family."

At first he was reluctant, but Brooks finally decided to correspond with Johnson. "I just feel that he needs a friend too."

--By Bobby Cuza