Author: By Jessica Bennett, Globe Correspondent Date: 05/01/2004 Page: B3

"He is a young man who has tried to do everything positive," said Andre John, a friend and mentor who has helped Shanks's grandmother raise him since his parents died a decade ago. "For this to happen to him, it raises the question, `Why him'?"

A seventh-grader at Grover Cleveland Middle School, located near the T station, Shanks was stabbed three times Tuesday as he stood on Dorchester Avenue with a group of students after school. Police arrested a 15-year-old suspect, who is scheduled to be arraigned in Dorchester District Court Monday, said David Procopio, spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office. He said yesterday that investigators still had no motive for the crime.

John said Shanks, who has been recovering at Boston Medical Center, hopes to go home early next week to Dorchester, where he lives with his grandmother.

Shanks is a star point guard for the Warriors Amateur Athletic Union's seventh-grade team, said Mark Papas, his coach and the union's director. He said the team has been playing with "heavy hearts" since Shanks's injury and will have to play today and tomorrow in the state championship without him.

"With J.R., we were the favorite to win the [state] championship; without him, it won't be easy," said Papas.

At practice Thursday, teammates signed a basketball and wrote get-well messages to Shanks.

"I just never thought this could happen," said Tres Nobles, 13, a forward from Wellesley. He said Shanks was the team's motivator. "It just seems so real now - it's like a reality check. . . . I just hope he's safe."

Nolan DiPanfilo, 13, a point guard from Saugus, said the team will miss Shanks but will play with him in mind. "We basically just need him," DiPanfilo said. "He's our sixth man, the first one who comes off the bench. He's our energy. We're just going to play much harder; we're going to win the state for him."

His teammates hope Shanks will recover in time for the national championship in Memphis in June and have set up a fund to help with his medical bills and rehabilitation. But they hope to pay for his ticket to the national championship - whether or not he can play. The team will display "Shanks Fund" posters at this weekend's tournament at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, and collect donations, Papas said.

Before his injury, Shanks spent many weekends working the admission booth and concession stands at Amateur Athletic Union tournaments to help pay for his AAU admission and earn extra money, Papas said. Last weekend, he worked from 4 to 10 p.m., and was back again at 5:30 a.m. the next day, he said. "He never complains," Papas said. "He is a team leader, but also treats the other kids with a lot of respect."

Basketball has been a huge part of Shanks's life from the time he could walk, said John, who met Shanks at a basketball court with his grandmother at age 4. John is the youth director at the Ella J. Baker House, a Dorchester community center that provides after-school programs and mentorship for area youths.

Shanks is "not a kid who hangs out on the streets - and if he does, he tells me exactly where he is and what he's doing," John said. "Even though he does not live with me, I call him every morning to make sure he's up for school. I'm the last person he talks to at night. I check with his teachers. . . . He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Shanks was on his way to the Baker House for basketball practice Tuesday when the stabbing occurred, said his grandmother, Barbara Goosby. She said she withdrew her grandson from Grover Cleveland at one point, concerned that the middle school was troubled by violence. Goosby said she enrolled Shanks in Frank V. Thompson Middle School in Dorchester, but when the school closed at the end of last year, Shanks was sent back to Grover Cleveland. Goosby said Shanks will not go back to Grover Cleveland this year. "We don't want to take any chances," she said.

Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole and other top commanders met with three merchants in Fields Corner yesterday to address concerns following Shanks's stabbing.

Captain Thomas Lee, head of District C-11, which encompasses the Fields Corner area, also has said police planned to meet with Boston public school officials and MBTA representatives to discuss ways to monitor the area better during school dismissal.

Lee said Shanks's involvement with the Baker House shows he was "trying to do the right thing."