Ian Manuel

Insane Judicial System: 13 year old Tampa boy SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON! Click here to learn about Ian Manuel.

Spared life now caring soul; a love for Tampa Series: NEWSMAKERS REVISITED
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Sep 8, 2001; MICHAEL CANNING;

Excerpt:

Though Debbie Baigrie has the kind of face that can draw attention in a room, on the night of July 27, 1990, her face stopped a noisy downtown bar cold: It had a bullet hole in it. She had fled from an attacker just outside.

Four days later, the mugger was arrested. He was 13-year-old Ian Manuel.

Today, Baigrie, 39, has to point to the wound on her lower left cheek for it to be noticed. As Baigrie endured painful reconstructive surgery to rebuild the gums and teeth obliterated in the shooting, she decided to rebuild herself in other ways.

She became a competitive bodybuilder, Ms. Tampa 1992 and the American Natural Bodybuilding Council person of the year in 1995. She also built a bridge to an unlikely person: Ian Manuel.

Not long after he was sentenced to life without parole, Manuel began writing Baigrie. Shocked at first, she eventually wrote him back, and forgave him. "My heart went out to him," Baigrie said. "He was a child. He had a bum rap from the time he was born."

Their correspondence eventually stopped. "Everybody told me he's a sociopath," she said. "And I had to come to that realization on my own."

Now Baigrie publishes the free monthly Natural Muscle Magazine, is married to Steve, a vice president at a flight simulator company, and is full-time mom to her daughters Dana 14, and Laura, 12.

In 1998 Dana was diagnosed with histiocytosis, a rare blood disease. Baigrie says her daughter is the reason her life was spared: "She needed me."

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When life means life
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Jun 3, 2001; CURTIS KRUEGER;

Excerpt:

Ian Manuel was 13 when he shot Deborah Baigrie during a stickup in a parking lot of the Cold Storage Cafe in downtown Tampa 11 years ago. The bullet entered her mouth and ripped out of her cheek. She lost her gums and teeth on the left side of her mouth.

Manuel had committed his first robbery at age 11. At sentencing, the judge told him: "There is no second chance available."

He is 24 now, in solitary confinement in Florida State Prison, by reputation the state's toughest. He has been sanctioned repeatedly for fighting, exposing himself to guards, disobeying and other infractions.

"The last time I shared a cell with someone was in 1998," Manuel wrote in a letter. The DOC would not allow him to be interviewed.

He said he gets out of his cell for three hours of recreation per week, in a small area "that everyone even the officers call 'dog cages.' "

His worst moments came in 1996, when his mother died of AIDS and he was unable to attend the funeral, and last year, when he was resentenced on one of his charges but still kept his same overall release date: Never.

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