J
Joe S.
Guest
Almost daily this newsgroup is subjected to posts about how an "armed
citizen" "stood his ground" and protected life and limb from an armed
desperado.
The NRA furthers this useless bullshit with an article in their monthly
magazine in which they repeat the same alleged incidents.
They won't tell you about the day-in-day-out senseless slaughter of innocent
people by firearms.
"A two-year-old shoots himself with a gun he finds behind the sofa, a
shopper is killed by a security guard, one brother fires on another - so it
goes. Nine dead in 24 hours" -- not a single case of an "armed citizen"
defending himself.
QUOTE
A two-year-old shoots himself with a gun he finds behind the sofa, a shopper
is killed by a security guard, one brother fires on another - so it goes.
Nine dead in 24 hours
Gary Younge
Saturday June 9, 2007
The Guardian
At 11.31pm on Saturday November 25 2006, Gerardo Parraga withdrew $120 from
a cashpoint machine in Throggs Neck, the Bronx, and walked the last 10
minutes home. Ordinarily, it's an uneventful jaunt through suburbia.
Gerardo, 19, had just finished a 12-hour shift as a security guard at New
York Law School and this was the final leg of his 90-minute commute. It was
the end of a long day, at the end of a long week. Within minutes, it would
be the end of his short life.
As he left the bank, he called his girlfriend, Yamil Mejia, to say he
thought a car was following him. Soon after, she heard a struggle over the
phone and then the line went dead. At home, his mother had just finished
decorating the Christmas tree when she got a panicked call from Mejia,
asking if Gerardo had made it back yet. When his mother rushed out to look
for him, she found his bloodied body lying in the street a few blocks away.
He had been shot in the back. Someone who lived across the street found him
with his eyes rolling and blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. The bullet
had punctured his lung.
Stephanie Rodolico, who lives in the apartment above the Parragas, remembers
that evening. "We heard the commotion downstairs, but they weren't the kind
of family to scream and yell," she says. It wasn't until the following
morning they learned what had happened, when Gerardo's father called out to
Stephanie's husband and started crying, "John, John, they killed my son."
Gerardo's father came to the US from Ecuador and the whole family were doing
their best to live the dream. Throggs Neck was a move up for them. Were it
not for the planes flying low over the Long Island Sound on their way to La
Guardia airport, it would be a quiet neighbourhood. Madonnas stand, arms
crossed, in glass cases on clipped lawns. Crime is down and on the porches
American flags are up. Gerardo had enrolled in a part-time course in
software engineering, computer programming and web design at Columbia
University, targeted at promising students from low-income families. "You
hardly ever saw him," says John Rodolico. "He was either at work or at
school."
After Gerardo's death, the Parragas moved to Queens. On the corner where he
fell, a bouquet of dried flowers hangs from a lamppost. "His mother couldn't
keep walking past the spot where he died every day," Stephanie says. "They
came to this area to better their lives and this is what happens. It shocked
all of us."
On an average day, eight Americans aged 19 or under are killed by firearms -
over a year, that adds up to more than the number who perished in the World
Trade Centre on 9/11. Of those eight victims, according to Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention figures for 2004 (the last year for which
statistics are available), seven are likely to be male and one female;
variously, three are black, four white and one Hispanic; five are likely to
be the victims of murder, two suicides and one classed as "unintentional",
"undetermined" or "legal intervention" - a police shooting.
In many respects, then, Gerardo's death set the scene for just another day
in America. Over the following 24 hours, on this day picked at random,
another eight children would lose their lives. Gerardo was the eldest; the
youngest was two. Eight were black and one was Hispanic. They died in
housing estates, suburbs and malls, at parties and on porches, in areas of
average income and of above-average poverty. They were shot by a relative,
friend, unknown assassin, a pizza delivery man, an off-duty police officer
and by accident. It was Thanksgiving, the biggest travelling weekend of the
year, when people are returning home after joining their families for the
holiday. By the time the day was over, nine families were one member short.
3.20am As Gerardo Parraga's life was ending, Jonathan Jacques' night out in
the Dorchester area of Boston was just beginning. At 9.30pm, he had given
his mother, Martine, a big kiss, and she had watched from her bedroom window
as he set off to meet friends. "He loves to party," she says. "He likes hip
hop, reggae and R&B." She still wavers between present and past tense when
talking about her son, who was 18 when he died. He and his friends were
heading for The $hort $kirt Affair, a three-day party that had been
advertised on MySpace: $5 for boys and $2 for girls. At around 2.45am, one
of the loudspeakers caught fire and the partygoers moved outside. Some of
Jonathan's friends called it a night, but he was still there after 3am when
an argument started. Locals, disturbed by the noise, were ready to call the
police when at 3.20am there was the sound of gunshots blended with shrill
teenage screams. Two girls, aged 14 and 15, and two boys, aged 16 and 17,
were wounded. Jonathan was shot dead.
One of his friends called Martine, who rushed to the hospital. "He died
instantly," she says, "but someone told me that the hearing is the last to
go. So I got to hold him and talk to him and I thought, even if he was dead,
maybe he could still hear me."
Jonathan was known as 40 Cal - as in 40-calibre pistol. It is a testament to
the pervasiveness of gun culture among US youth that his friends insist his
nickname owed nothing to street violence. His middle name was Calvin and he
was 6ft 4in and reed thin, like the barrel of a .40. "He's a comedian,"
Martine says. "You could never stay mad at him for long. He had a very
playful personality. People would always ask him to babysit." Martine, who
was born in Haiti and came to the US when she was eight, says she has good
days and bad days - "Days when I can't talk about it at all." She still has
the soap from his last shower. "Every time he left the house, he would look
in the mirror and ask me how many phone numbers I thought he would get that
night."
Jonathan dropped out of school. He had a part-time job at a Stop & Shop
supermarket, but wanted to go into real estate. Martine had only recently
moved from north Dorchester, where she worried her children might get into
trouble. She'd thought about moving to the suburbs, but believed Jonathan
would then be harassed by "racist white cops asking what he was doing
there". There had been a time when Jonathan hung out with the wrong crowd
and had had a few brushes with the law, but all of that was behind him now.
"He was no hoodlum," his mother says. "He was a good kid."
Since her boys were teenagers, she had been haunted by the fear that guns
might take them. There is a connection, she believes, between the violence
that blights America and the country's actions elsewhere. "When people see
what we're doing in the rest of the world, they think, why not in my
neighbourhood? The government sets an example of violence and then it gets
played out on the streets."
A mile or so away, at the Louis D Brown Peace Institute, Clementina Chery
says American society is failing its children. "This violence did not just
happen overnight," she says. "We allowed it to happen. This country does not
help people to help themselves. I love Dorchester. But we live in hell. The
only resources we get are helicopters, police, cameras and prisons. These
are the hellkeepers, but we have no resources to find the peacekeepers."
Chery's son, Louis D Brown, was 15 when he was shot 14 years ago. The
institute that bears his name aims to assist families of both victims and
perpetrators in the immediate aftermath of shootings, and works in schools
and the community to educate people about gun violence. When Jonathan was
killed, Chery knew how to help. As the sun came up on the morning of
November 26, a memorial for Jonathan, complete with candles and flowers, was
already forming in the neighbourhood where he'd grown up. "The victims and
perpetrators are getting younger and younger," Chery says.
10.28am Timberlan Addison, two years old, was staying with his 37-year-old
father, Timothy, in Tampa, Florida. The west coast of Florida simmered in
the mid-70s that day and, amid the palm trees and Spanish moss, you could
almost forget that one in five families in this part of the city lives below
the poverty line. Timothy had had several brushes with the law, including
time in prison for cocaine possession. But neighbours say he was an
attentive father who often looked after Timberlan at weekends. Renee
Henderson, who lives across the road, described Timothy as "a sweet person".
Her daughter, Marquita, was pregnant with his seventh child. Timberlan was
his sixth.
That Sunday morning, the two of them had gone out to get some breakfast.
Back home, Timberlan was playing, climbing over the furniture, when he
reached behind the couch and found a Sig Sauer 9mm semi-automatic. According
to the police report, Timothy said he had the gun for protection - there had
been several burglaries in the neighbourhood - but usually left it in a safe
when his son was home. Timberlan pulled the trigger. When Timothy heard the
bang, he picked up his crying son to comfort him, thinking he was just
scared. Only when he saw the blood seeping through his red-and-white striped
T-shirt did he realise that Timberlan had shot himself.
Timothy ran across the street with Timberlan in his arms, knocking and
shouting for Renee. When she opened her door, she saw the baby slumped in
one of the white plastic chairs on the porch. She tried to staunch the blood
by putting a towel to his chest, and then called an ambulance. Michael Spirk
was the first policeman on the scene. He "observed an adult black male
holding a small black male child, lying on a sofa in the living room. The
adult black male was extremely distraught." When he tried to give Timberlan
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, "copious amounts of blood would run from his
wound".
Timberlan was taken to Tampa General Hospital. Timothy was taken to the
station for questioning while the police searched the house. They allegedly
found two 1oz bags of marijuana in the microwave and more seeds on digital
scales on the kitchen counter. They also reportedly recovered a Glock
semi-automatic pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including some
for an assault rifle. "He was then handcuffed," reads the police report,
"and placed under arrest for being a felon in possession of a firearm, after
which he was told that his son had expired as a result of the gunshot wound.
Mr Addison then became overcome with grief, and began screaming and crying.
After a short time he became more agitated and refused to sit in a chair or
be cooperative. He was then transported to central booking by uniformed
officers."
Two months later, Timothy was arrested while at his construction job and
charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell, parole violation
and possession of a firearm during a drug crime. He still faces state
charges of culpable negligence for leaving the gun where Timberlan could get
hold of it. Timberlan's mother was at the hearing, where she reacted angrily
to the charges. "I forgave him from day one," she said. "These people are
not taking into consideration that this man lost his child ... He wakes up
every morning crying. He feels like it's his fault."
All of this made Timberlan's death newsworthy for several weeks - far longer
than any of the teenagers killed by gunfire that day. It is nothing unusual
for a shooting to rate a few paragraphs in the local press and then
disappear altogether from the public record. "Over the past few years we
have seen America become more desensitised to gun violence," says Alicia
Horton of the Brady Campaign, an advocacy group to prevent gun violence.
"I'm not sure if it's an emotional reflex or a coping strategy or what, but
people have just started to turn the channel. They shut down in a way that
they didn't used to."
2pm The case of Brandon Martell Moore, a 16-year-old killed in Detroit,
caused barely a ripple. Moore was shot by an off-duty police officer outside
the National Wholesale Liquidators on 8 Mile. Brandon was never named by the
authorities or the city's two main newspapers. "Why would I want to live in
a place where my son can't even be remembered?" says his father, John Henry
Moore Sr. "That means he didn't mean nothing to this city."
Brandon was a quiet boy. According to his sister Ebony, the only time he had
anything to say was when "he was seeing a girl or making jokes". He and his
younger brother were such devotees of Beavis and Butt-head that his mother
had to hide the video so they wouldn't keep watching it. "At the funeral,
lots of girls I didn't even know came up to me crying and said, 'I was his
girlfriend,' " says his mother, Susie Burks, laughing. "There was a whole
row of them there."
National Wholesale Liquidators, a warehouse store, sprawls along the edge of
Bel-Air mall on the corner of a road lined with boarded-up houses, empty
lots and abandoned stores - a burned-out carcass where the heart of a
community once beat. On the front door, a sign says that those 16 years and
younger must be accompanied by an adult. Brandon had come with four friends
to buy video games. They didn't see the sign but, since one of them was 22
and another 19, it didn't apply to them anyway.
Police say Brandon was part of a gang making trouble in the store, and that
one of the staff had asked them to leave. On their way out, they ran into an
off-duty police officer (who was moonlighting at the store as a security
guard): "One teenager took off his coat and rushed the off-duty police
officer," according to a police spokesman quoted in the Detroit Free Press.
The others got involved and the officer opened fire, killing one and
wounding another.
Diane Bukowski, from the local black paper, the Michigan Citizen, was the
only reporter to pursue the case and heard an entirely different account
from those who were with Brandon that day. They had split up and were
walking round the store when Brandon's older brother, John Henry, saw his
friends being thrown out. They argued but left anyway, before realising that
one of their number wasn't with them. One of the boys (not Brandon) tried to
get past the security guard and back into the store. A tussle began. "I saw
something fall to the floor. I thought it was a cell phone, but it was a gun
in its holster," John Henry said. "The man didn't realise at first. Then he
picked it up, put one arm on top of the other arm and started aiming at us.
Brandon wasn't involved in anything. He was the last one to take off
running, I guess."
According to the autopsy, Brandon was shot in the back. When his father
asked for a police report, an officer allegedly told him, "I'm not ****ing
giving it to you."
The man who killed Brandon is Eugene J Williams. His badge number is 4174.
According to various press reports, he has had a colourful history with
Detroit's finest. In 1971, he was sacked after he was involved in a fatal
hit-and-run accident while under the influence of alcohol. He was reinstated
in 1974 on appeal. Five years later, he shot dead an armed and drunk
31-year-old man while in a neighbourhood dispute. Five years after that, he
shot his wife in the side during a domestic dispute in which he claimed she
lunged at him with a pair of scissors. She survived, and he was able to
continue his career in the police force.
Williams was not suspended for the shooting of Brandon Moore; instead, he
was assigned to a Detroit traffic unit. When I called the unit, Williams
answered the phone and, after some initial equivocation, denied ever having
heard of Brandon. Last month an investigation ruled that the shooting was
justifiable homicide.
3.30pm An hour and half after Brandon died, and 700 miles to the south-east,
a 13-year-old took his late great uncle's shotgun out of a closet and shot
his cousin Terry Hayes, 14, square in the face at point-blank range. The
bullet went through Terry's left cheek and took off the back of his head.
The boys had just returned from church in Petersburg, Virginia, a sleepy
town that feels more southern than its geography would have you believe. By
all accounts Terry was a regular kid. He wanted to be a businessman or a
pro-footballer. He loved sketching, and playing video games with his cousin.
"They were always hanging out," says Tania Hayes, Terry's stepmother. "They
were beyond cousins. They were best friends." She recalls a time when she
grounded Terry only to find his cousin at her door demanding access. "Mrs T,
you're either gonna let me in or let him out," he told her.
The Hayes' extended family had been having a tough winter. A few weeks
earlier the 13-year-old's great uncle, James Brunt, had been killed by a
drunk driver. Uncle "Bo" always told him to stay away from the closet, but
now he was gone.
"We're still trying to find out where the gun came from," said police
lieutenant Tom Young. "We think it was stolen but whoever stole it never
checked to see if it was loaded."
Last month the boy appeared in court, but sentencing was postponed pending
psychiatric evaluations. "The judge was asking him simple questions, like,
'Where do you live?' and 'How old are you?'" explains Young, "and he kept
saying, 'I don't know.' "
Terry's dad, Terry Sr, has been in the military, stationed in Europe, and
knows American gun culture is not inevitable. "I'm torn," he says. "I
respect the right to bear arms. But you don't know what fool out there might
have a gun or what child in the next room might pick one up next. And then -
bang!"
7.49pm In a wealthy suburb of Las Vegas, three time zones away, Jason Moore,
Lamar Brown and four friends went to another friend's house to drop off some
jeans. The friend and his family were all away, but Lamar knew the code to
the garage door and let them in. Once inside, they made themselves at home,
logging on to a computer and messing about with Lamar's MySpace page.
Lamar's younger sister, Tatiana, describes him affectionately as "a little
shrimp always talking like a big lobster". Jason is variously described by
friends and family as "cool", "chilled" and "really nice". He wanted to be a
rapper and certainly had attitude. He had recently been suspended from
school after he "cussed out" a PE teacher who "jumped up in his face".
Lamar, 18, and Jason, also 18, were foster brothers. Their mothers had once
been friends. But Lamar's mother, Robin Stumps, had become Jason's legal
guardian because of his own mother's drug habit. "When you saw one, you saw
them both," she says. "They were so close."
But there, in their friend's house, something happened. No one will say
what, but it ended shortly before eight o'clock when Lamar shot Jason in the
chest with a 20-gauge shotgun, according to the police report. "I didn't
know what happened," says Curtis Perkins, one of the boys who was with them.
"I heard a gunshot and then suddenly everybody was just running out the
house. I ran, too."
According to the police report, Lamar threw the gun in the bushes, called
911 for Jason and then got in a car with three of the friends and drove
away. Later, he came to the hospital to see how Jason was faring and was
picked up by detectives. News reports that night suggested Jason's condition
was critical but stable and recovering. He was pronounced dead at 3.50am the
next morning.
"He bled to death," insists family friend Dee-Dee Lovato. "The bullet hit
his shoulder and missed his major arteries and organs. Lamar shot him, but
he didn't have to die."
"Accidents happen," says Jason's brother, Genesis. "People should watch what
they do with guns and **** - they ain't nothing to play with."
I met Jason's family the day that Seung-Hui Cho shot dead 32 of his fellow
students at Virginia Tech university before turning the gun on himself. On
the way there, I heard several callers to the local radio station ringing in
to say the tragedy could have been avoided if the students had been armed.
"If you're not a policeman, you don't need a gun," says Robin Stumps. "I
thought I was the best black mother in the world. None of my kids were gang
members. None of them has a gun."
"I do," says her eldest son from across the room. "Well, I know how to get
one."
Tatiana has Jason's name tattooed on her arm - it is just one way in which
the young here remember their dead. Stores in some areas do a good trade in
Rest In Peace T-shirts. Inner city walls are decorated with RIP murals. More
recently, pages on MySpace have transformed a social networking site into an
electronic graveyard, with friends posting testimony to the departed.
Jason's page bears a picture of him and Lamar with their arms around each
other's shoulders, taken just days before the shooting.
Lamar pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Originally it was thought
he would get five years' probation but, following the publicity surrounding
the shooting, a young woman came forward with an accusation of sexual
assault against him that could carry anything from 10 years to life in
prison. According to his sister Chenell, he now sits in Clark County
Detention centre crying himself to sleep. When it comes to sentencing, his
mother will act as a character witness for both him and Jason.
7.57pm Two and a half thousand miles east, in Hyattsville, Maryland, gunfire
shattered the quiet of a new housing development near the Martin Luther King
Highway. Korey Campbell, 17, had been shot in the back just five minutes
from his home. Korey was going places. Specifically, the next day he was
going back to Keystone, Pennsylvania, where he was just two weeks from
graduating from Job Corps, a vocational training programme for young adults.
Korey had been doing well: three weeks earlier, his supervisor's report had
described him as an "outstanding young man" with "excellent leadership
skills" - "Korey will be an asset to whomever and wherever he takes
employment."
"He was ready for life," says his mother, Vonda Campbell. "The first thing
he had to do was learn to drive. But he was ready ... He was ready." Vonda
had struggled to make sure her children made something of themselves. Her
eldest son got a basketball scholarship to attend New Haven university.
Korey had come back for Thanksgiving, and when he was shot he was walking
home from a friend's house to pack for the next day's trip. "A lot of women
around here have lost their children for no reason," Vonda says. "I would
hold my breath when Korey was back until he got on the bus for Pennsylvania.
I chose to send him away from this area."
Korey was the fourth person to be shot in the area - notorious for drug
dealing, she says - in the past four months. "They had a vigil right there
after two previous murders, but I never thought it would happen to me." She
pulls out a small black bag with some of Korey's things in it, including
some T-shirts and his favourite chewing gum. She hands me a picture of him
in his coffin. "I can't look at it," she says. "If his sister comes in,
pretend it's something else. She can't handle that at all." The prison where
Korey's father is incarcerated would not let him out for the funeral.
The police have not contacted Vonda in several months to tell her of any
developments in the case. "It feels like nobody cares," she says. "Like he
was never here. Just another black kid dead. But he was here. He was my
child. He existed."
The Campbells live just 25 minutes' drive from Washington DC - the nation's
capital and, tellingly, the place where young people are by far the most
likely to be shot dead (more than 15 times more so than in New York state).
It is also home to the Supreme Court, which upholds the second amendment of
the constitution enshrining the right to bear arms. Back in the 18th
century, this was a revolutionary measure, crafted to protect the general
population from tyrannical government (notably Britain). Nowadays, the
citizenry are more likely to shoot each other. Even the most strident
supporters of gun control, such as the Brady campaign, say they respect the
second amendment. "We don't even want to get into the discussion," says
Alicia Horton. "We are not a gun-banning organisation. The number one
preventative measure to stop young people being killed by guns would be to
reduce access to firearms. Regardless of how they died, if young people
couldn't put their hands on a gun, then other young people wouldn't be
shot." Most Americans seem to agree: a Pew research poll shows that while
public support for greater gun control has waned over the past decade, the
majority still back it.
But it does not look likely to happen any time soon - the gun lobby can
still rally sufficient support to take gun control off the political agenda
regardless of who's in power. Before the 2000 election, the National Rifle
Association boasted that it was so close to George Bush that it would be
working "out of his office". They have been pretty much true to their word.
(The NRA turned down repeated requests for comment for this article.) Just a
few weeks before these nine youngsters died, the Democrats won control of
both Senate and House of Representatives in the Congressional elections.
John Conyers, who became the Democratic chairman of the House judiciary
committee, pledged he would not "support or forward to the House any
legislation to ban handguns".
9.45pm In Cherry Hill, Baltimore, 14-year-old Bernard Simon was sitting on a
friend's porch, just around the corner from his home, when someone shot him.
At one end of the street where he lived, searchlights stand on 20ft poles;
at the other is a flashing neon-blue light, courtesy of Baltimore police,
with the message "24/7 Believe". No one on the small block where Bernard was
shot will admit to having even heard of him. His mother has moved away. The
only evidence that Bernard was ever there is some graffiti scrawled on a
power box: "Hez hooliganz. RIP Bernie."
Cherry Hill has the feel of a South African township. With just a few ways
in and out, it is easier to contain than it is to police. Sitting on a
promontory poking out into the Potapsco River, it is not on the way to
anywhere. Outsiders have no reason to go there, and many of those who live
there have no reason to leave because they don't have work. More than half
of its 8,000 residents live in poverty.
"If you're in Cherry Hill, then chances are it's your destination," says
Cathy McClain, executive director of the Cherry Hill Trust, a local group
dedicated to revitalising the area.
Boarded-up houses punctuate the estate. In what is left of the playpark
opposite Bernard's former home stands half a slide with small steps leading
to thin air. The night before I arrived in town, somebody was shot dead.
Gangs became rampant in the 80s; membership was based on where you lived.
And if gang life is no longer synonymous with the drugs trade as it once
was, the dealing continues.
Bernard was a member of the Up The Hill gang - not to be mistaken for the
Hillside gang. "I don't know what you can do to fix this," says McClain. "We
just haven't been successful in persuading these kids to want to live beyond
their teenage years. They don't seem to want to be grandparents. They'd
rather live on on somebody's T-shirt. If they're 21, then they're old."
Bernard's assailant was never found. Indeed, not one of the four cases of
teenagers killed by unknown gunmen that Sunday has been solved.
10.15pm Less than an hour after Bernard Simon was gunned down, a call came
in to Super Crown Pizza in suburban Atlanta for a home delivery to the
Huntingwood Pointe housing complex two miles away. Super Crown has a list of
addresses it won't deliver to. It's not difficult to see why - pizza
delivery is a dangerous business in these parts. "A lot of my deliverymen
have been robbed," says Muhammad Iftkhar, a Pakistani immigrant who arrived
in the US 13 years ago. "They steal the money, they steal the food, the car.
One time they took all the man's clothes and car keys. The guy just walked
back here in his underwear." Another time, Muhammad had a pistol stuck in
his mouth while the place was cleaned out. The chefs work behind bulletproof
glass. Muhammad won't say whether or not he keeps a gun in the shop. "My
main concern is business," he says. "I don't want any kind of trouble."
It was Zaid Mahmood's turn to take the pizza. Zaid had risked his life to
deliver pizzas before: four months earlier, he had been beaten and had all
his money and his green card stolen.
Huntingwood Pointe is one of several housing estates that sits back off a
main road and is enclosed on all other sides by trees - it was not on Super
Crown's no-go list. Zaid delivered the pizza and was on his way back to his
car when, according to police reports, "he was approached by a group of
three or four people who demanded his money". They told him to lie on the
ground and hand over his car keys. Zaid stayed standing and handed over the
keys. One of the boys, 14-year-old Kenyatta Calhoun, told Zaid to hand over
his mobile phone. Zaid allegedly put his hand into his pocket, as though he
were going for his phone, took out his gun and shot Kenyatta several times.
Two of the boys, one of whom had already got into Zaid's car, ran away.
Kenyatta lay dying under a tree.
Chikobi Bush, 19, says he heard the shots and ran out to see what was going
on. "I saw Kenyatta lying on the ground. He was breathing, but he couldn't
say nothing." He describes Kenyatta as a "cool guy". "He used to come out,
sit around and talk to people." It's 11 o'clock in the morning when I visit,
and Chikobi is doing just that himself, sitting and talking in one of the
stairwells. One of his friends struggles to recall Kenyatta.
"The short nigga?"
"No, the light-skinned guy."
"He got shot? ****!"
A lot of people get shot around here, they say - "For drugs, gangs, girls
.... anything."
When I ask whether everyone has guns, they just laugh. "You knock on a door
and ask, 'Have you got a gun?' and see if they don't pull a pistol on your
ass," says the friend and laughs some more.
What do they need guns for?
"Protection," says Chikobi.
From whom?
"From everybody."
A few months earlier, Georgia had passed a "stand your ground" law that
permitted state residents to use deadly force to respond to threats in
public places, with no duty to retreat. Zaid walked free.
And so Thanksgiving Sunday ended in Atlanta as it began in the Bronx - with
robbery, death and the sound of gunshot. No one would know from where the
next day's deaths would come. The only certainty was that they would come.
On the morning of November 27, a gunlovers' website, glocktalk.com, ran a
discussion thread about Kenyatta's death the night before.
The Fly wrote, "I do love a cleaner gene pool."
Butcher asked, "How many 14-year-old gangbangers are gonna be killed this
week?"
Lcarreau responded, "Not enough."
END QUOTE
citizen" "stood his ground" and protected life and limb from an armed
desperado.
The NRA furthers this useless bullshit with an article in their monthly
magazine in which they repeat the same alleged incidents.
They won't tell you about the day-in-day-out senseless slaughter of innocent
people by firearms.
"A two-year-old shoots himself with a gun he finds behind the sofa, a
shopper is killed by a security guard, one brother fires on another - so it
goes. Nine dead in 24 hours" -- not a single case of an "armed citizen"
defending himself.
QUOTE
A two-year-old shoots himself with a gun he finds behind the sofa, a shopper
is killed by a security guard, one brother fires on another - so it goes.
Nine dead in 24 hours
Gary Younge
Saturday June 9, 2007
The Guardian
At 11.31pm on Saturday November 25 2006, Gerardo Parraga withdrew $120 from
a cashpoint machine in Throggs Neck, the Bronx, and walked the last 10
minutes home. Ordinarily, it's an uneventful jaunt through suburbia.
Gerardo, 19, had just finished a 12-hour shift as a security guard at New
York Law School and this was the final leg of his 90-minute commute. It was
the end of a long day, at the end of a long week. Within minutes, it would
be the end of his short life.
As he left the bank, he called his girlfriend, Yamil Mejia, to say he
thought a car was following him. Soon after, she heard a struggle over the
phone and then the line went dead. At home, his mother had just finished
decorating the Christmas tree when she got a panicked call from Mejia,
asking if Gerardo had made it back yet. When his mother rushed out to look
for him, she found his bloodied body lying in the street a few blocks away.
He had been shot in the back. Someone who lived across the street found him
with his eyes rolling and blood bubbling from his mouth and nose. The bullet
had punctured his lung.
Stephanie Rodolico, who lives in the apartment above the Parragas, remembers
that evening. "We heard the commotion downstairs, but they weren't the kind
of family to scream and yell," she says. It wasn't until the following
morning they learned what had happened, when Gerardo's father called out to
Stephanie's husband and started crying, "John, John, they killed my son."
Gerardo's father came to the US from Ecuador and the whole family were doing
their best to live the dream. Throggs Neck was a move up for them. Were it
not for the planes flying low over the Long Island Sound on their way to La
Guardia airport, it would be a quiet neighbourhood. Madonnas stand, arms
crossed, in glass cases on clipped lawns. Crime is down and on the porches
American flags are up. Gerardo had enrolled in a part-time course in
software engineering, computer programming and web design at Columbia
University, targeted at promising students from low-income families. "You
hardly ever saw him," says John Rodolico. "He was either at work or at
school."
After Gerardo's death, the Parragas moved to Queens. On the corner where he
fell, a bouquet of dried flowers hangs from a lamppost. "His mother couldn't
keep walking past the spot where he died every day," Stephanie says. "They
came to this area to better their lives and this is what happens. It shocked
all of us."
On an average day, eight Americans aged 19 or under are killed by firearms -
over a year, that adds up to more than the number who perished in the World
Trade Centre on 9/11. Of those eight victims, according to Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention figures for 2004 (the last year for which
statistics are available), seven are likely to be male and one female;
variously, three are black, four white and one Hispanic; five are likely to
be the victims of murder, two suicides and one classed as "unintentional",
"undetermined" or "legal intervention" - a police shooting.
In many respects, then, Gerardo's death set the scene for just another day
in America. Over the following 24 hours, on this day picked at random,
another eight children would lose their lives. Gerardo was the eldest; the
youngest was two. Eight were black and one was Hispanic. They died in
housing estates, suburbs and malls, at parties and on porches, in areas of
average income and of above-average poverty. They were shot by a relative,
friend, unknown assassin, a pizza delivery man, an off-duty police officer
and by accident. It was Thanksgiving, the biggest travelling weekend of the
year, when people are returning home after joining their families for the
holiday. By the time the day was over, nine families were one member short.
3.20am As Gerardo Parraga's life was ending, Jonathan Jacques' night out in
the Dorchester area of Boston was just beginning. At 9.30pm, he had given
his mother, Martine, a big kiss, and she had watched from her bedroom window
as he set off to meet friends. "He loves to party," she says. "He likes hip
hop, reggae and R&B." She still wavers between present and past tense when
talking about her son, who was 18 when he died. He and his friends were
heading for The $hort $kirt Affair, a three-day party that had been
advertised on MySpace: $5 for boys and $2 for girls. At around 2.45am, one
of the loudspeakers caught fire and the partygoers moved outside. Some of
Jonathan's friends called it a night, but he was still there after 3am when
an argument started. Locals, disturbed by the noise, were ready to call the
police when at 3.20am there was the sound of gunshots blended with shrill
teenage screams. Two girls, aged 14 and 15, and two boys, aged 16 and 17,
were wounded. Jonathan was shot dead.
One of his friends called Martine, who rushed to the hospital. "He died
instantly," she says, "but someone told me that the hearing is the last to
go. So I got to hold him and talk to him and I thought, even if he was dead,
maybe he could still hear me."
Jonathan was known as 40 Cal - as in 40-calibre pistol. It is a testament to
the pervasiveness of gun culture among US youth that his friends insist his
nickname owed nothing to street violence. His middle name was Calvin and he
was 6ft 4in and reed thin, like the barrel of a .40. "He's a comedian,"
Martine says. "You could never stay mad at him for long. He had a very
playful personality. People would always ask him to babysit." Martine, who
was born in Haiti and came to the US when she was eight, says she has good
days and bad days - "Days when I can't talk about it at all." She still has
the soap from his last shower. "Every time he left the house, he would look
in the mirror and ask me how many phone numbers I thought he would get that
night."
Jonathan dropped out of school. He had a part-time job at a Stop & Shop
supermarket, but wanted to go into real estate. Martine had only recently
moved from north Dorchester, where she worried her children might get into
trouble. She'd thought about moving to the suburbs, but believed Jonathan
would then be harassed by "racist white cops asking what he was doing
there". There had been a time when Jonathan hung out with the wrong crowd
and had had a few brushes with the law, but all of that was behind him now.
"He was no hoodlum," his mother says. "He was a good kid."
Since her boys were teenagers, she had been haunted by the fear that guns
might take them. There is a connection, she believes, between the violence
that blights America and the country's actions elsewhere. "When people see
what we're doing in the rest of the world, they think, why not in my
neighbourhood? The government sets an example of violence and then it gets
played out on the streets."
A mile or so away, at the Louis D Brown Peace Institute, Clementina Chery
says American society is failing its children. "This violence did not just
happen overnight," she says. "We allowed it to happen. This country does not
help people to help themselves. I love Dorchester. But we live in hell. The
only resources we get are helicopters, police, cameras and prisons. These
are the hellkeepers, but we have no resources to find the peacekeepers."
Chery's son, Louis D Brown, was 15 when he was shot 14 years ago. The
institute that bears his name aims to assist families of both victims and
perpetrators in the immediate aftermath of shootings, and works in schools
and the community to educate people about gun violence. When Jonathan was
killed, Chery knew how to help. As the sun came up on the morning of
November 26, a memorial for Jonathan, complete with candles and flowers, was
already forming in the neighbourhood where he'd grown up. "The victims and
perpetrators are getting younger and younger," Chery says.
10.28am Timberlan Addison, two years old, was staying with his 37-year-old
father, Timothy, in Tampa, Florida. The west coast of Florida simmered in
the mid-70s that day and, amid the palm trees and Spanish moss, you could
almost forget that one in five families in this part of the city lives below
the poverty line. Timothy had had several brushes with the law, including
time in prison for cocaine possession. But neighbours say he was an
attentive father who often looked after Timberlan at weekends. Renee
Henderson, who lives across the road, described Timothy as "a sweet person".
Her daughter, Marquita, was pregnant with his seventh child. Timberlan was
his sixth.
That Sunday morning, the two of them had gone out to get some breakfast.
Back home, Timberlan was playing, climbing over the furniture, when he
reached behind the couch and found a Sig Sauer 9mm semi-automatic. According
to the police report, Timothy said he had the gun for protection - there had
been several burglaries in the neighbourhood - but usually left it in a safe
when his son was home. Timberlan pulled the trigger. When Timothy heard the
bang, he picked up his crying son to comfort him, thinking he was just
scared. Only when he saw the blood seeping through his red-and-white striped
T-shirt did he realise that Timberlan had shot himself.
Timothy ran across the street with Timberlan in his arms, knocking and
shouting for Renee. When she opened her door, she saw the baby slumped in
one of the white plastic chairs on the porch. She tried to staunch the blood
by putting a towel to his chest, and then called an ambulance. Michael Spirk
was the first policeman on the scene. He "observed an adult black male
holding a small black male child, lying on a sofa in the living room. The
adult black male was extremely distraught." When he tried to give Timberlan
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, "copious amounts of blood would run from his
wound".
Timberlan was taken to Tampa General Hospital. Timothy was taken to the
station for questioning while the police searched the house. They allegedly
found two 1oz bags of marijuana in the microwave and more seeds on digital
scales on the kitchen counter. They also reportedly recovered a Glock
semi-automatic pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including some
for an assault rifle. "He was then handcuffed," reads the police report,
"and placed under arrest for being a felon in possession of a firearm, after
which he was told that his son had expired as a result of the gunshot wound.
Mr Addison then became overcome with grief, and began screaming and crying.
After a short time he became more agitated and refused to sit in a chair or
be cooperative. He was then transported to central booking by uniformed
officers."
Two months later, Timothy was arrested while at his construction job and
charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell, parole violation
and possession of a firearm during a drug crime. He still faces state
charges of culpable negligence for leaving the gun where Timberlan could get
hold of it. Timberlan's mother was at the hearing, where she reacted angrily
to the charges. "I forgave him from day one," she said. "These people are
not taking into consideration that this man lost his child ... He wakes up
every morning crying. He feels like it's his fault."
All of this made Timberlan's death newsworthy for several weeks - far longer
than any of the teenagers killed by gunfire that day. It is nothing unusual
for a shooting to rate a few paragraphs in the local press and then
disappear altogether from the public record. "Over the past few years we
have seen America become more desensitised to gun violence," says Alicia
Horton of the Brady Campaign, an advocacy group to prevent gun violence.
"I'm not sure if it's an emotional reflex or a coping strategy or what, but
people have just started to turn the channel. They shut down in a way that
they didn't used to."
2pm The case of Brandon Martell Moore, a 16-year-old killed in Detroit,
caused barely a ripple. Moore was shot by an off-duty police officer outside
the National Wholesale Liquidators on 8 Mile. Brandon was never named by the
authorities or the city's two main newspapers. "Why would I want to live in
a place where my son can't even be remembered?" says his father, John Henry
Moore Sr. "That means he didn't mean nothing to this city."
Brandon was a quiet boy. According to his sister Ebony, the only time he had
anything to say was when "he was seeing a girl or making jokes". He and his
younger brother were such devotees of Beavis and Butt-head that his mother
had to hide the video so they wouldn't keep watching it. "At the funeral,
lots of girls I didn't even know came up to me crying and said, 'I was his
girlfriend,' " says his mother, Susie Burks, laughing. "There was a whole
row of them there."
National Wholesale Liquidators, a warehouse store, sprawls along the edge of
Bel-Air mall on the corner of a road lined with boarded-up houses, empty
lots and abandoned stores - a burned-out carcass where the heart of a
community once beat. On the front door, a sign says that those 16 years and
younger must be accompanied by an adult. Brandon had come with four friends
to buy video games. They didn't see the sign but, since one of them was 22
and another 19, it didn't apply to them anyway.
Police say Brandon was part of a gang making trouble in the store, and that
one of the staff had asked them to leave. On their way out, they ran into an
off-duty police officer (who was moonlighting at the store as a security
guard): "One teenager took off his coat and rushed the off-duty police
officer," according to a police spokesman quoted in the Detroit Free Press.
The others got involved and the officer opened fire, killing one and
wounding another.
Diane Bukowski, from the local black paper, the Michigan Citizen, was the
only reporter to pursue the case and heard an entirely different account
from those who were with Brandon that day. They had split up and were
walking round the store when Brandon's older brother, John Henry, saw his
friends being thrown out. They argued but left anyway, before realising that
one of their number wasn't with them. One of the boys (not Brandon) tried to
get past the security guard and back into the store. A tussle began. "I saw
something fall to the floor. I thought it was a cell phone, but it was a gun
in its holster," John Henry said. "The man didn't realise at first. Then he
picked it up, put one arm on top of the other arm and started aiming at us.
Brandon wasn't involved in anything. He was the last one to take off
running, I guess."
According to the autopsy, Brandon was shot in the back. When his father
asked for a police report, an officer allegedly told him, "I'm not ****ing
giving it to you."
The man who killed Brandon is Eugene J Williams. His badge number is 4174.
According to various press reports, he has had a colourful history with
Detroit's finest. In 1971, he was sacked after he was involved in a fatal
hit-and-run accident while under the influence of alcohol. He was reinstated
in 1974 on appeal. Five years later, he shot dead an armed and drunk
31-year-old man while in a neighbourhood dispute. Five years after that, he
shot his wife in the side during a domestic dispute in which he claimed she
lunged at him with a pair of scissors. She survived, and he was able to
continue his career in the police force.
Williams was not suspended for the shooting of Brandon Moore; instead, he
was assigned to a Detroit traffic unit. When I called the unit, Williams
answered the phone and, after some initial equivocation, denied ever having
heard of Brandon. Last month an investigation ruled that the shooting was
justifiable homicide.
3.30pm An hour and half after Brandon died, and 700 miles to the south-east,
a 13-year-old took his late great uncle's shotgun out of a closet and shot
his cousin Terry Hayes, 14, square in the face at point-blank range. The
bullet went through Terry's left cheek and took off the back of his head.
The boys had just returned from church in Petersburg, Virginia, a sleepy
town that feels more southern than its geography would have you believe. By
all accounts Terry was a regular kid. He wanted to be a businessman or a
pro-footballer. He loved sketching, and playing video games with his cousin.
"They were always hanging out," says Tania Hayes, Terry's stepmother. "They
were beyond cousins. They were best friends." She recalls a time when she
grounded Terry only to find his cousin at her door demanding access. "Mrs T,
you're either gonna let me in or let him out," he told her.
The Hayes' extended family had been having a tough winter. A few weeks
earlier the 13-year-old's great uncle, James Brunt, had been killed by a
drunk driver. Uncle "Bo" always told him to stay away from the closet, but
now he was gone.
"We're still trying to find out where the gun came from," said police
lieutenant Tom Young. "We think it was stolen but whoever stole it never
checked to see if it was loaded."
Last month the boy appeared in court, but sentencing was postponed pending
psychiatric evaluations. "The judge was asking him simple questions, like,
'Where do you live?' and 'How old are you?'" explains Young, "and he kept
saying, 'I don't know.' "
Terry's dad, Terry Sr, has been in the military, stationed in Europe, and
knows American gun culture is not inevitable. "I'm torn," he says. "I
respect the right to bear arms. But you don't know what fool out there might
have a gun or what child in the next room might pick one up next. And then -
bang!"
7.49pm In a wealthy suburb of Las Vegas, three time zones away, Jason Moore,
Lamar Brown and four friends went to another friend's house to drop off some
jeans. The friend and his family were all away, but Lamar knew the code to
the garage door and let them in. Once inside, they made themselves at home,
logging on to a computer and messing about with Lamar's MySpace page.
Lamar's younger sister, Tatiana, describes him affectionately as "a little
shrimp always talking like a big lobster". Jason is variously described by
friends and family as "cool", "chilled" and "really nice". He wanted to be a
rapper and certainly had attitude. He had recently been suspended from
school after he "cussed out" a PE teacher who "jumped up in his face".
Lamar, 18, and Jason, also 18, were foster brothers. Their mothers had once
been friends. But Lamar's mother, Robin Stumps, had become Jason's legal
guardian because of his own mother's drug habit. "When you saw one, you saw
them both," she says. "They were so close."
But there, in their friend's house, something happened. No one will say
what, but it ended shortly before eight o'clock when Lamar shot Jason in the
chest with a 20-gauge shotgun, according to the police report. "I didn't
know what happened," says Curtis Perkins, one of the boys who was with them.
"I heard a gunshot and then suddenly everybody was just running out the
house. I ran, too."
According to the police report, Lamar threw the gun in the bushes, called
911 for Jason and then got in a car with three of the friends and drove
away. Later, he came to the hospital to see how Jason was faring and was
picked up by detectives. News reports that night suggested Jason's condition
was critical but stable and recovering. He was pronounced dead at 3.50am the
next morning.
"He bled to death," insists family friend Dee-Dee Lovato. "The bullet hit
his shoulder and missed his major arteries and organs. Lamar shot him, but
he didn't have to die."
"Accidents happen," says Jason's brother, Genesis. "People should watch what
they do with guns and **** - they ain't nothing to play with."
I met Jason's family the day that Seung-Hui Cho shot dead 32 of his fellow
students at Virginia Tech university before turning the gun on himself. On
the way there, I heard several callers to the local radio station ringing in
to say the tragedy could have been avoided if the students had been armed.
"If you're not a policeman, you don't need a gun," says Robin Stumps. "I
thought I was the best black mother in the world. None of my kids were gang
members. None of them has a gun."
"I do," says her eldest son from across the room. "Well, I know how to get
one."
Tatiana has Jason's name tattooed on her arm - it is just one way in which
the young here remember their dead. Stores in some areas do a good trade in
Rest In Peace T-shirts. Inner city walls are decorated with RIP murals. More
recently, pages on MySpace have transformed a social networking site into an
electronic graveyard, with friends posting testimony to the departed.
Jason's page bears a picture of him and Lamar with their arms around each
other's shoulders, taken just days before the shooting.
Lamar pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Originally it was thought
he would get five years' probation but, following the publicity surrounding
the shooting, a young woman came forward with an accusation of sexual
assault against him that could carry anything from 10 years to life in
prison. According to his sister Chenell, he now sits in Clark County
Detention centre crying himself to sleep. When it comes to sentencing, his
mother will act as a character witness for both him and Jason.
7.57pm Two and a half thousand miles east, in Hyattsville, Maryland, gunfire
shattered the quiet of a new housing development near the Martin Luther King
Highway. Korey Campbell, 17, had been shot in the back just five minutes
from his home. Korey was going places. Specifically, the next day he was
going back to Keystone, Pennsylvania, where he was just two weeks from
graduating from Job Corps, a vocational training programme for young adults.
Korey had been doing well: three weeks earlier, his supervisor's report had
described him as an "outstanding young man" with "excellent leadership
skills" - "Korey will be an asset to whomever and wherever he takes
employment."
"He was ready for life," says his mother, Vonda Campbell. "The first thing
he had to do was learn to drive. But he was ready ... He was ready." Vonda
had struggled to make sure her children made something of themselves. Her
eldest son got a basketball scholarship to attend New Haven university.
Korey had come back for Thanksgiving, and when he was shot he was walking
home from a friend's house to pack for the next day's trip. "A lot of women
around here have lost their children for no reason," Vonda says. "I would
hold my breath when Korey was back until he got on the bus for Pennsylvania.
I chose to send him away from this area."
Korey was the fourth person to be shot in the area - notorious for drug
dealing, she says - in the past four months. "They had a vigil right there
after two previous murders, but I never thought it would happen to me." She
pulls out a small black bag with some of Korey's things in it, including
some T-shirts and his favourite chewing gum. She hands me a picture of him
in his coffin. "I can't look at it," she says. "If his sister comes in,
pretend it's something else. She can't handle that at all." The prison where
Korey's father is incarcerated would not let him out for the funeral.
The police have not contacted Vonda in several months to tell her of any
developments in the case. "It feels like nobody cares," she says. "Like he
was never here. Just another black kid dead. But he was here. He was my
child. He existed."
The Campbells live just 25 minutes' drive from Washington DC - the nation's
capital and, tellingly, the place where young people are by far the most
likely to be shot dead (more than 15 times more so than in New York state).
It is also home to the Supreme Court, which upholds the second amendment of
the constitution enshrining the right to bear arms. Back in the 18th
century, this was a revolutionary measure, crafted to protect the general
population from tyrannical government (notably Britain). Nowadays, the
citizenry are more likely to shoot each other. Even the most strident
supporters of gun control, such as the Brady campaign, say they respect the
second amendment. "We don't even want to get into the discussion," says
Alicia Horton. "We are not a gun-banning organisation. The number one
preventative measure to stop young people being killed by guns would be to
reduce access to firearms. Regardless of how they died, if young people
couldn't put their hands on a gun, then other young people wouldn't be
shot." Most Americans seem to agree: a Pew research poll shows that while
public support for greater gun control has waned over the past decade, the
majority still back it.
But it does not look likely to happen any time soon - the gun lobby can
still rally sufficient support to take gun control off the political agenda
regardless of who's in power. Before the 2000 election, the National Rifle
Association boasted that it was so close to George Bush that it would be
working "out of his office". They have been pretty much true to their word.
(The NRA turned down repeated requests for comment for this article.) Just a
few weeks before these nine youngsters died, the Democrats won control of
both Senate and House of Representatives in the Congressional elections.
John Conyers, who became the Democratic chairman of the House judiciary
committee, pledged he would not "support or forward to the House any
legislation to ban handguns".
9.45pm In Cherry Hill, Baltimore, 14-year-old Bernard Simon was sitting on a
friend's porch, just around the corner from his home, when someone shot him.
At one end of the street where he lived, searchlights stand on 20ft poles;
at the other is a flashing neon-blue light, courtesy of Baltimore police,
with the message "24/7 Believe". No one on the small block where Bernard was
shot will admit to having even heard of him. His mother has moved away. The
only evidence that Bernard was ever there is some graffiti scrawled on a
power box: "Hez hooliganz. RIP Bernie."
Cherry Hill has the feel of a South African township. With just a few ways
in and out, it is easier to contain than it is to police. Sitting on a
promontory poking out into the Potapsco River, it is not on the way to
anywhere. Outsiders have no reason to go there, and many of those who live
there have no reason to leave because they don't have work. More than half
of its 8,000 residents live in poverty.
"If you're in Cherry Hill, then chances are it's your destination," says
Cathy McClain, executive director of the Cherry Hill Trust, a local group
dedicated to revitalising the area.
Boarded-up houses punctuate the estate. In what is left of the playpark
opposite Bernard's former home stands half a slide with small steps leading
to thin air. The night before I arrived in town, somebody was shot dead.
Gangs became rampant in the 80s; membership was based on where you lived.
And if gang life is no longer synonymous with the drugs trade as it once
was, the dealing continues.
Bernard was a member of the Up The Hill gang - not to be mistaken for the
Hillside gang. "I don't know what you can do to fix this," says McClain. "We
just haven't been successful in persuading these kids to want to live beyond
their teenage years. They don't seem to want to be grandparents. They'd
rather live on on somebody's T-shirt. If they're 21, then they're old."
Bernard's assailant was never found. Indeed, not one of the four cases of
teenagers killed by unknown gunmen that Sunday has been solved.
10.15pm Less than an hour after Bernard Simon was gunned down, a call came
in to Super Crown Pizza in suburban Atlanta for a home delivery to the
Huntingwood Pointe housing complex two miles away. Super Crown has a list of
addresses it won't deliver to. It's not difficult to see why - pizza
delivery is a dangerous business in these parts. "A lot of my deliverymen
have been robbed," says Muhammad Iftkhar, a Pakistani immigrant who arrived
in the US 13 years ago. "They steal the money, they steal the food, the car.
One time they took all the man's clothes and car keys. The guy just walked
back here in his underwear." Another time, Muhammad had a pistol stuck in
his mouth while the place was cleaned out. The chefs work behind bulletproof
glass. Muhammad won't say whether or not he keeps a gun in the shop. "My
main concern is business," he says. "I don't want any kind of trouble."
It was Zaid Mahmood's turn to take the pizza. Zaid had risked his life to
deliver pizzas before: four months earlier, he had been beaten and had all
his money and his green card stolen.
Huntingwood Pointe is one of several housing estates that sits back off a
main road and is enclosed on all other sides by trees - it was not on Super
Crown's no-go list. Zaid delivered the pizza and was on his way back to his
car when, according to police reports, "he was approached by a group of
three or four people who demanded his money". They told him to lie on the
ground and hand over his car keys. Zaid stayed standing and handed over the
keys. One of the boys, 14-year-old Kenyatta Calhoun, told Zaid to hand over
his mobile phone. Zaid allegedly put his hand into his pocket, as though he
were going for his phone, took out his gun and shot Kenyatta several times.
Two of the boys, one of whom had already got into Zaid's car, ran away.
Kenyatta lay dying under a tree.
Chikobi Bush, 19, says he heard the shots and ran out to see what was going
on. "I saw Kenyatta lying on the ground. He was breathing, but he couldn't
say nothing." He describes Kenyatta as a "cool guy". "He used to come out,
sit around and talk to people." It's 11 o'clock in the morning when I visit,
and Chikobi is doing just that himself, sitting and talking in one of the
stairwells. One of his friends struggles to recall Kenyatta.
"The short nigga?"
"No, the light-skinned guy."
"He got shot? ****!"
A lot of people get shot around here, they say - "For drugs, gangs, girls
.... anything."
When I ask whether everyone has guns, they just laugh. "You knock on a door
and ask, 'Have you got a gun?' and see if they don't pull a pistol on your
ass," says the friend and laughs some more.
What do they need guns for?
"Protection," says Chikobi.
From whom?
"From everybody."
A few months earlier, Georgia had passed a "stand your ground" law that
permitted state residents to use deadly force to respond to threats in
public places, with no duty to retreat. Zaid walked free.
And so Thanksgiving Sunday ended in Atlanta as it began in the Bronx - with
robbery, death and the sound of gunshot. No one would know from where the
next day's deaths would come. The only certainty was that they would come.
On the morning of November 27, a gunlovers' website, glocktalk.com, ran a
discussion thread about Kenyatta's death the night before.
The Fly wrote, "I do love a cleaner gene pool."
Butcher asked, "How many 14-year-old gangbangers are gonna be killed this
week?"
Lcarreau responded, "Not enough."
END QUOTE