Manchester — Bennie Gray Jr. is taking his second chance at life and running with it, the way he once ran with a football in the green and gold uniform of New London High School.

He was released from prison in May to the Open Hearth halfway house in Hartford after serving more than 18 years for manslaughter. He expects to be released soon into the community, where he will remain under parole supervision until 2019.

"My focus right now is to get my home life right, then to give back," Gray, 37, said during an interview earlier this month in a student lounge at Manchester Community College, where he is enrolled full-time in a work-study program.

Gray is newly married to Candace Foster, formerly of Norwich, whom he met when they spoke through a vent in the New London courthouse lockup facility three years ago, and who understands his challenges all too well due to her own involvement in a deadly crime.

The couple plan to live together in New Britain once he is released from the halfway house. He has few close relatives left in the New London area, Gray said, and no reason to resettle in southeastern Connecticut.

In a yellow button-down shirt and khakis, with an open notebook on the table next to his first-ever smart phone, the soft-spoken Gray blends in easily on the college campus.

An honor student and standout football player before he took to running the streets and selling drugs, he was charged with the November 1997 shooting death of DeJohn Strong. 

Gray said he discovered in prison that he has an aptitude for the law, and he aspires to become a lawyer by the time he is 45. He said he wants to help give prisoners a voice and to see what he can do for young people in the Hartford area.

He is doing maintenance work at the college and studying political science and U.S. government. He also has been working as a barber and helping a friend with home improvement jobs.

"I won't say it's been really easy coming out (of prison), and I understand people aren't always going to accept you," Gray said. "There has to be a point where you become humble. You have to realize it's going to take a little while."

Gray was arrested in November 1997 along with his cousin, Tavorus Fluker, who was with him at a Michael Road apartment complex the night DeJohn Strong died. Gray received a harsher sentence because he was convicted of the actual shooting. Though he said he accepts full responsibility for his involvement and has tried to apologize to Strong's family, he points to a Superior Court judge's finding in 2004 that Fluker "just as likely, if not more so" had done the shooting.

Gray's mother had died in a car crash while his case was pending, but other family members continued to support him throughout his nearly two decades of incarceration.

A couple of times during the interview, Gray said he was "blessed."

"On the days when there was nobody else around, I was on my knees, praying," he said.

They met in lockup

Gray and Foster met while being held in separate areas of the Huntington Street courthouse lockup. Gray heard her singing a song and stepped onto a toilet and then the sink of his cell and put his ear to a vent. Neither remembers the song she was singing, although it might have been "Have you ever loved someone."

"I said, 'Who's there?''' Gray remembered. He said there was no response, and he was about to jump down when Foster replied, "It's me."

They had a long conversation and, before they left, yelled out each other's names and inmate numbers. He wrote to her, sending his letters through family members, and she responded. They lost contact after she was released at the end of 2014, but resumed their correspondence after one of Gray's family members found Foster on Facebook.

"She keeps telling me, 'I'm going to help you when you come home,''' he said. "'You're going to need someone.' Before long we developed feelings for each other."

Foster, 36, served four years and 10 months in prison for her role in the 2004 beating death of renowned physicist Eugene Mallove. She had entered into a witness program in 2009 and cooperated with the police. Charged with murder in 2010, she served time while continuing to cooperate in the prosecution of the father of her children, Chad Schaffer, and his cousin, Mozzelle Brown. She testified that she had been forced to take part in the beating and feared coming forward because Schaffer was abusive. After Schaffer and Brown were convicted, she was allowed to plead guilty to reduced charges of hindering prosecution and tampering with a witness.

She said that since meeting Gray, she has never been happier. She is working as a nurse's aide.

In the summer of 2015, Foster began to visit Gray in the Enfield prison. They were able to greet each other with a hug and visit with only a short divider between them.

"I was very nervous going up there," she remembered. "I was very tongue tied. He laughed, because he said, 'You had a whole lot to say the whole time, and now you're speechless.' ''

She told her probation officer about the relationship, and he said it was OK "as long as he treats you well," Foster said.

They both bear the burden of the crimes they were involved in, but are taking their future "day by day," she said.

"Anything we've been through makes us stronger," Foster said. "I understand where he has come from, the time he has served. I was there. I understand about the mental aspect of coming out. Everything changes. People change. I was able to mentally be there for him."

They were married Dec. 15 in a ceremony performed in prison by a justice of the peace and are excited they will finally have the chance to live together.

Foster's children, who live with their grandmother, "adore him," Foster said.

Gray had fathered two children before his arrest. He said they lived with their grandmother, Mashantucket Pequot tribal councilor Marjorie Colebut-Jackson, and that he and the children's mother, Natalie Torres, get along.

"We're trying to get him home and we'll take it from there," Foster said. "We just want to be happy."

No more cursing or rap music

Gray's cousin, Tamekia Durham, said that several times during Gray's incarceration, she traveled to Connecticut from her home in Baltimore to bring Bennie Gray III and Myasia Gray to visit their father in prison. The children are now in college, and Gray said his son is planning to move in with him and Foster.

Durham said Gray was always mature for his age and was a leader within the family. Acknowledging the loss suffered by Strong's family, she said that Gray's incarceration was a huge loss, too. She was thrilled to visit him at a Hartford barbershop where he began working immediately upon his release and said Gray gave her a good haircut.

"Bennie has been the one on the inside, but his attitudes, words and everything have been so positive," Durham said. "He's accepted what he's done and decided he was going to make the best of it."

Rhonda Exum, the widow of DeJohn Strong, said of Gray's release, "It just really hurts to know that he's out making a living, raising his son while my children remain fatherless. He gets a second chance at life and we live a lifetime without."

Luckily, she said, her three children did not fall through the cracks and are "wonderful young men and women" who are all bound for college.

About six years ago, Gray said he was finally able to forgive Fluker, his cousin, who he said "had blood," or a beef, with Strong and his associates and involved him in the crime. Fluker has since returned to prison for his involvement in an unrelated shooting.  

Gray said once he decided to move on with his life, he stopped cursing, changed his way of speaking, and took advantage of every program and opportunity available.

"There were certain conversations that just aren't for me anymore," he said.

He stopped listening to rap music that promotes violence.

"I don't have time to do that anymore," he said of his former way of life. "I lost enough time already."  

He served as a mentor and tutor to other prisoners. He earned so-called "good time" off his 23-year sentence under the Department of Correction's Risk Reduction Earned Credit program and in January was granted parole.

He was selling drugs during high school, and said an arrest resulted in his being expelled at the end of his junior year. He smoked marijuana, he said, but was never a heavy narcotics user. At Open Hearth, he is required to attend six 12-step meetings a week.

Gray received some disciplinary tickets in prison, most recently, he said, for a tussle on a basketball court on a day when he was feeling frustrated about his efforts to get released early.

Karen Martucci, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said Gray didn't have a spotless incarceration, but that his discipline record was somewhat typical. 

"The parole board voted him to parole," Martucci said. "So obviously they also felt he was following the path we want to see of somebody headed back into the community."  

Out of prison, Gray says the right things. He uses phrases like, "use your head before you do anything," and "it's the choices you make" to convey that he knows what he has to do to stay free.

"Is it overwhelming?" he said of his new life. "At times it can be. You want to get your life back on track so fast that you forget to slow down and enjoy the experience."

k.florin@theday.com