At age 9, Eric Ayala learned to be accountable. That’s when his mother, Brandy Truitt, gave her only child a key to their small house in a gritty neighborhood on the west side of Wilmington, Del. Every day after school, located just down the street from his home, he’d walk back and look after himself.
The rules were simple: No one could come in, and Ayala couldn’t go out, until his mother returned from her job at the city’s police department.
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“I had to grow up faster” than other kids, Ayala recalled recently.