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This story was corrected on May 6, 2010. An explanation of the correction follows the story.

Ed Kittrell of Capitol Heights remembers his third suicide attempt as clearly as if had happened yesterday.

In 2003, with no job and no home on the streets of Southeast Washington, D.C., Kittrell, now 34, approached a man he knew was armed and made up a story about how he needed to borrow a handgun for protection.

Kittrell retreated to an abandoned apartment building, drew the gun to the side of his skull and pulled the trigger.

The gun jammed.

As the heat from the barrel of the gun burned his scalp, Kittrell said he got on his knees and asked God to help him through his depression, an illness he would later see his childhood friend Kenny Riley go through, but with a more tragic result: Riley killed himself in December 2007.

Driven to save young lives like Riley's, in 2008 Kittrell founded the organization 1 LYFE @ A TIME — the "y" in "Lyfe" emphasizing the group's work with youth — to honor his friend and draw attention to suicide prevention and the warning signs of anxiety and depression.

Kittrell said he noticed Riley's symptoms of depression, such as withdrawal from loved ones and drug abuse, but he regrets never reaching out.

"When he died, I took it hard," Kittrell said. "I vowed from that day that people are going to hear our stories."

Kittrell meets with and counsels Prince George's County residents daily who know friends suffering from depression or are suffering themselves. For those who need professional services, he refers them to Donna Barnes, president of National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide, or to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. He tries to attend any and every speaking engagement to tell his story, he said.

Each year he and friend Rakeem Sean Harris, 34, of Clinton organize Skyline Day, a community event at Morningside's Douglas Patterson Park that features food, games and a basketball tournament in honor of Riley, who grew up in the nearby Skyline neighborhood.

Skyline Day received an official citation recognizing the event from Gov. Martin O'Malley's (D) office in 2009, and the third annual day will be June 12. Kittrell is also working with the city of Bowie on holding a suicide awareness walk in October.

Kittrell said he is working on getting a nonprofit status for his organization and hopes to open an office where residents can drop in to seek advice.

Harris said his friend's success in creating One Lyfe To Live has been a stark — and lifesaving — contrast to the hopelessness Kittrell suffered years earlier, which he attributes to never addressing emotional trauma he suffered in childhood.

Kittrell said he kept mum about being molested three times before the age of 12, once by a relative and twice by residents in his community. He said he also was stressed by early parenthood, when his now ex-wife gave birth to son DeOndre, now 14, during Kittrell's senior year of high school.

He eventually got a job paying $50,000 a year with Verizon but lost the job and struggled to keep others. He would get dressed in the morning for work, but then spend hours curled up in bed sobbing.

After a near-fatal drug overdose and attempted hanging between 2002 and 2003, it was after his third suicide attempt — when the gun jammed — that he realized he survived for a reason: to reach others.

Lisa Covington, founder and executive director of Suicide Prevention Education Awareness For Kids, also known as SPEAK, said Kittrell is very honest with youth about what happened in his life and instrumental in making other people see that their secrets must be told.

Both Covington and Harris said Kittrell's work is especially important in the black community, where suicide is a taboo subject swept under the rug, especially among black men.

"With us black guys in the community, we tend to have a certain ego where we don't want anybody to know that we're going through something," Harris said. "It's a pride issue."

Covington, who also serves on the Maryland Commission on Suicide Prevention, said that in 2009 there were 603 suicides, up from more than 490 in 2008, according to state statistics. Out of that 603, 88 were people younger than age 24, including 30 youths under age 18, she said.

Among the young people who say Kittrell has been instrumental in helping get their lives on track is David Selby, 24, of Suitland.

Selby said he met Kittrell in 2008 through a friend who lives in Skyline. Selby said he attempted suicide multiple times after he lost his job in an infantry regiment at Aberdeen Proving Ground and was unable to find another job to provide for his family.

Selby said Kittrell has been a shoulder to lean on and encouraged him to focus on what he did have, such as his family and the chance to go back to school.

"You got to find the good in what's going wrong," Selby said. "There's always a bright side."

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the name of the organization Kittrell founded.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.