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MOURNERS HEAR OF SAD AND DANGEROUS TIMES

Author: RICKI MORELL, Staff Writer

Brandi Henderson was buried Monday in a pink dress in a white coffin with a picture of her infant son near her heart. Almost 200 friends and relatives filed into Macedonia Baptist Church to say goodbye to the 18-year-old woman found strangled in her apartment on Wednesday - and to mourn the nine other women police say were killed by the same man over the past 20 months. ``We are living in a very sad time, when someone can take another person's life,'' Sally Miller, a member of Mothers of Murdered Offspring, said during a candlelight memorial service. ``It's time for Charlotte to wake up. It's time for the world to wake up. This should not have been. We call ourselves civilized. I don't see it anymore.'' Henderson's 10-month-old son, Tareese Woods, was choked during the killer's attack, but he survived. Blond and cherubic, he squirmed and wriggled in his father's arms on Monday as the choir sang ``Amazing Grace.'' ``She was a wonderful person; that's about all there is to say about Brandi,'' said Berness Lamar Woods, Henderson's boyfriend and Tareese's father. ``It's a shame it happened. Just a shame.'' ``She was a sweet person who didn't bother nobody,'' said Brandi's cousin, Delores Henderson. ``I hate that this happened to her. She didn't deserve to die.'' It was nearly midnight Wednesday when Woods found Henderson strangled with a towel in their apartment at The Lake apartments. He also found Tareese with towels wrapped around his neck. Henry Louis Wallace is charged with killing Henderson and nine other women. Wallace became friends with Henderson and Woods when all three worked at the Golden Corral Steak House on North Sharon Amity Road. ``We are living in some terrible times,'' said the Rev. John Walker, pastor of Henderson's church on Hateras Avenue off LaSalle Street. ``These are dangerous times as violence and frustration seems to be pointing its finger at every household in every community. No one is exempt.'' Henderson's mother, Debora Childers was composed at the beginning of the service but crumpled into sobs by the graveside benediction at Oaklawn Cemetery. Clarence and Dorothy Henderson, Henderson's father and stepmother, sat quietly nearby. ``She was a good child,'' said her grandmother, Jessie Henderson. ``I hate she's gone.'' Brandi Henderson's parents separated when she was 2. She lived more with her father's family than with her mother's. Childers said she last spoke to Henderson in January. Her death made Childers realize how fragile family is - and how important.
``All of these women who were killed have families,'' she said. ``You've only got one family. Don't wait until one dies before you bring everybody together.'' ____________________
Stephanie B.