RALEIGH, N.C. — They were going to start looking to buy their own place early next year, somewhere on the outskirts of town, somewhere with a bigger and nicer yard. For three years, Tracey Howard and his wife had been renting in the Hedingham neighborhood in east Raleigh, but they wanted a home of their own. That was the dream.
Friday afternoon, though, there was a bullet hole in the mailbox next to his driveway and a police car idling in the street, an officer keeping watch. Television reporters jockeyed to put microphones and cameras in Howard’s face while he tried to explain his stolen future, and a dream that now will never come true.
“Things don’t seem real,” he said, staring into a void while he sat on his front porch. “Nothing seems real.”
