De’Andre L. McCullough, 35, the young protagonist of the book “The Corner,” which chronicled a year on a drug-plagued street corner in West Baltimore and was turned into an HBO miniseries, died Aug. 1 of an apparent overdose in Baltimore County, according to police and relatives.
It marked the end of a long struggle with addiction for McCullough, who had showed promise of getting his life on track but at the time of his death was being sought on warrants charging him with two armed robberies at Baltimore pharmacies, police said.
Baltimore County police said McCullough was found about 6:20 p.m. Aug. 1 by a girlfriend inside a residence in Woodlawn, Md. The medical examiner’s office has not determined the cause of death, but family members said there was evidence of an overdose.
“De’Andre was very special and very talented, but he could get in his own way quicker than his shadow,” said Donnie Andrews, who was an inspiration for the “Omar” character on “The Wire” and married McCullough’s mother, Fran Boyd, in 2007. “It was a demon inside of him that he couldn’t get rid of.”
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David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who co-wrote the 1997 book “The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood,” said Mr. McCullough grew up in a hopeless area of Baltimore. As a young teen, he sold drugs on the corner with friends and lived in a home where both parents struggled with severe addiction.
“He was living in a rough house, a house where police kicked in the door twice a month whether [they] needed to or not,” Simon said. “It was a level of addiction in his household that was quite dramatic.”
Mr. McCullough was smart and had a biting sense of humor, once explaining to Simon, whom he saw wandering the city’s tough neighborhoods, why he decided to help him research the book. “You looked so stupid and so out of place that I felt sorry for you,” Simon recalled him saying.
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Mr. McCullough went from selling drugs to abusing them. Ed Burns, a former city police officer and co-writer of "The Corner," said in a 2004 interview that Mr. McCullough was "a cool kid. He was a great street fighter. He had a great sense of humor. And he was into a little marijuana. ... By the end of the year, he was sniffing heroin and cocaine."
Share this articleShare“The Corner” ended with his first adult arrest, and Simon recalled that Mr. McCullough was frustrated with that conclusion. “He said, ‘You write that like it’s the end. Maybe that’s not the end,’” Simon said.
Mr. McCullough’s father died of a drug overdose as the book was being prepared, and many of his friends were gunned down in drug violence.
His mother overcame her addiction and married Andrews after being introduced by Simon and Burns. She became a drug counselor and adopted nieces and nephews from other relatives battling addiction. Her adopted children are all attending school or college and doing well, Andrews said.
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But Mr. McCullough couldn’t shake his addiction.
“There’s been a lot of success for Fran, and that’s important to say,” Simon said in an interview. “She did everything possible [for De’Andre]. At points, she was encouraging and generous, with second chances upon second chances. At other points, she tried tough love and set rules and boundaries. She tried everything under the sun. Nothing worked.”
Mr. McCullough earned a GED, attended Baltimore Community College for a semester and held several jobs, including working as a youth counselor. Simon helped him land work on his television projects. He appeared as an actor on “The Corner” and “The Wire” and worked behind the scenes, including doing set construction, on “Treme,” which was filmed in New Orleans.
City police said they had linked Mr. McCullough to robberies of Baltimore pharmacies on June 8 and June 22. In both instances, a man produced a handgun and took bottles of morphine and other prescription medications.
Mr. McCullough had recently entered a treatment facility.
“We have a whole city of De’Andres running around, who pass dead bodies on the way to school and take drugs to hide their emotions,” Andrews, Mr. McCullough’s stepfather, said. “Drug addiction is a medical problem, and people should address it as such. It doesn’t mean people are monsters. It means they have a problem.”
— Baltimore Sun
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