Firestar .45
Arrowhead gun shop
Arrowhead pawnshop in Jonesboro, Georgia where the Firestar .45 was first purchased.

On April 7, 1997, the Arrowhead Pawn Shop in Jonesboro, Georgia took possession, from a gun distributor, of a Firestar, a .45 calibre Spanish-made handgun. Arrowhead owner, Arthur Banks, put the steel-framed semi-automatic pistol in the glass showcase at the back of the store. It was known on the street as a little “pocket rocket”, for its compact size and power. The asking price was $600.

The Firestar .45's first owner

Christonia Woods was a small-time drug dealer in Clayton County, Georgia who felt his job required him to carry some protection. For his 21st birthday,Woods wanted a gun, initially, something shiny, big, with a bit of stopping power and he knew just the place to go. He visited the Arrowhead Pawn Shop with his friend Shannon Wilson. Wilson remembers that day, April 29, 1997.

“He wanted something chrome and shiny just for the thrill of having it, you know. But we looked at many guns. He picked out, you know, like the Dirty Harry, .657, the .44 magnum. He started picking out some huge guns he liked that one.”

christonia Woods Christonia Woods, the first owner of the gun.

But, then, Wilson recalled, his friend Christonia Woods spotted the Firestar .45.

“And he said, no, I like this one. I want this pearl. He wanted something pretty.”

The birth of Michael James

That same year that the Firestar .45 arrived at the Arrowhead Pawn Shop and ended up in Christonia Woods’ possession, 2,000 kilometres away in Jamaica, the James family welcomed the birth of a baby boy, called Michael.

The story of how the lives of Michael James, from Jamaica and a gun, from Jonesboro, Georgia end up colliding in a suburb of Toronto five years, eight months and 27 days after the Firestar .45 first left the Arrowhead Pawn Shop, is the story of FIRESTAR .45.

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On a blistering hot day in Atlanta in August, the fifth estate went looking for Christonia Woods' friends to learn a bit more about the short, brutal life of a young man who died when he was 22, the victim in a double homicide. All we had were crime scene photos that showed a violent end in a housing complex in a rundown party of Jonesboro, Georgia.

What we learned was that by the age of 16, Woods had dropped out of school and was working at a car lot, buffing and polishing BMWs and Mercedes. His friend, Shannon Wilson remembers that Woods wanted to own these cars, not work on them.

By the time he was 20, Woods was selling drugs: crack cocaine and marijuana. He was driving a gold Chrysler Sebring with the licence plate Brighty–his nickname. But, a few months before he was murdered, Shannon Wilson remembers Woods was trying to change his life. He had enrolled in a business college in Atlanta and started a business with Wilson building kitchen cabinets. Woods was talking about getting married to the mother of one of his children. He was murdered, by two other drug dealers, on September 22, 1999. Arthur Banks, owner of Arrowhead Pawn Shop, in Jonesboro, Georgia, has been selling guns for about two decades. Seven hundred and five guns used in crimes were traced, by police, back to Arrowhead Pawn Shop.

In 2004, the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation published Selling Crime: High Crime Gun Stores Fuel Criminals which, for the first time, identified which American gun stores sold the largest volume of crime guns. The report used the most recent data available, 1996-2000, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The ATF found that one percent of the 80,000 licenced gun dealers in the U.S. sold more that 57 per cent of all crime guns. Arthur Banks and the Arrowhead Pawn Shop ranked number 19 on that list. Michael James was born in Jamaica and moved to Mississauga, Ontario with his family where they lived in a quiet, suburban home. Michael was described as a bright, inquisitive and polite boy, eager to sing, make music and help others.

He was shot and killed accidentally by a playmate on January 3, 2003 with the gun that had been puchased originally in Jonesboro, Georgia by Christonia Woods. The Firestar .45 handgun was in a bedroom dresser drawer where it had been hidden by Michael's older brother for a drug dealer. Michael was six-years-old.