DOOM OF DREAM
E’Dena on cusp of success But bad-news beau ‘clearly troubled’
IT WAS ALL starting to come together.
After years of insecurities, false starts and miscues, E’Dena Hines’ dream of big-screen stardom was finally taking shape — until she was cast opposite her loser boyfriend in a real-life drama that ultimately got her killed.
The budding actress, who was Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman’s granddaughter, was found lying in the middle of a Washington Heights street with multiple stab wounds to her body about 3 a.m. Sunday, officials said.
Cops arrested 30-year-old Lamar Davenport and charged him with second-degree murder. Davenport (inset) was taken into custody, and the knife was recovered at the scene, authorities said. He underwent a mental evaluation at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, sources said.
Friends said Davenport was the only thing standing between Hines and the box-office big time. One of Hines’ industry pals said he met the boyfriend when Hines came to visit, and knew immediately that he was trouble. “I met him last year when she came to New Orleans to watch a play I was in,” said the friend, Carl Hancock Rux, 38, a writer and theater director. “He was really drunk, inebriated. I was kind of taken aback by that. He couldn’t stand up. She wasn’t drunk, but he was. I was concerned about the relationship she was in. But sometimes you don’t say everything you feel and think, and then sometimes something like this happens and you wish you had.
“She was in a relationship with someone who was clearly troubled. I didn’t see the attraction and didn’t understand what was good about the relationship.”
Davenport’s drinking might not have been the only dark cloud affecting their relationship.
In January, when the aspiring rapper was staying in a dilapidated brick rowhouse in Harrisburg, Pa., cops there responded to a call involving Davenport for “a medical issue involving drugs,” and he was taken to a hospital by ambulance, a police official said.
No criminal charges were filed against Davenport, who rapped under the name “Lyric.” Police did
not say what the drugs were.
Davenport had other brushes with the law as well. He was arrested in New York for petty larceny in 2010 and in Los Angeles in 2014 for drug possession. He was convicted on the California charge in February.Hines, 33, and Davenport both attended NYU, where Hines studied for three years at the Tisch School of the Arts’ prestigious graduate acting program.
Rux said he met Davenport that one time — and that was enough. He said that after the show, Davenport was so drunk they had to take him back to the hotel before he and Hines went to dinner without him.
“She saw him as a troubled person, but she never mentioned anything to me about being in trouble,” Rux said. “She only said that she felt he had a lot of issues. I guess she expected that he’d be OK.”
But he wasn’t. Witnesses said the suspect was found kneeling over Hines on W. 162nd St. near St. Nicholas Ave., reportedly yelling, “Get out, devils!” as he allegedly plunged a knife into her body.
Hines’ brutal death was taking a toll on members of her grieving family, including Myrna ColleyLee, Freeman’s second ex-wife, who visited Hines’ Washington Heights apartment and stared out the window at the street below. Hines was Freeman’s granddaughter with his first wife.
Hines believed her career and life were finally moving in the right direction. Another friend, Ray Rosario, who said he dined with Hines and Davenport just hours before her death, said she seemed “ecstatic.” Rosario’s impression is not different from the mood Hines herself described in a blog post just last month.
“My dream has come true and it’s just beginning,” she said on the blog post after landing a part in an indie film. “Life can make you want to give up or walk away; sometimes it gives you the strength to appreciate when you do get your happy ending.”
Friends said Hines could have cashed in on her grandfather’s fame. Even though she walked the red carpet with Freeman and had a small role in his 2014 film “5 Flights Up,” she was determined to make it on her own.
“E’Dena was incredibly self-sufficient, vocal and incredibly talented,” Rux said. “She was not the type of person who relied on her grandfather to cast her or book her shows. She was starting from scratch just like everyone else.”
In fact, Hines got so frustrated with her career that she almost gave up on her dream. Two years ago, Hines left New York because she was feeling “unfulfilled.”
“I wasn’t sure where I fit in or what I wanted,” Hines wrote. “So, I left.” Hines went to Memphis, where she was teaching “underexposed youths.” But she returned to New York in April, after landing a part in the independent film “Landing Up,” which began filming last month.