Death Comes Quickly – Part 2

This ten-year-old girl was killed last week. She was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout involving her parent and some other people.

What brings me to write is an article in today’s paper showing a very nice school picture (above left) and the principal of her school’s comments. She knew the girl in the school picture. The girl represented by her parent’s MySpace page (above right) appalled the principal.

The shooting could have happened across the street from me. A household of gang members lives there. I wrote about them in Death Comes Quickly. At this point in time they are on their best behavior. They were about to loose their welfare housing, etc so they are doing their best to hide their true colors.

Look at the pictures below. They are from one of the boy’s MySpace pages. Their little sister is being trained from a young age to flash gang signs. She is part of a gang family. That will be her identity long before she understands what it means.



There was a shooting in front of their house a few months ago. Some of their friends shot at a car that was driving by. The friends took off on foot. When the police arrived, they wouldn’t even tow the shooter’s car. It didn’t matter that we saw all this happening out of our front window. The police took off after about 20 minutes. I guess a shooting isn’t enough, you must need a dead body. A few minutes after that a guy came and drove the car off.

The whole thing did bring some heat on the gang house. So now they are laying low. Instead of parking in front of the house, people will park down the street. The danger remains but I guess that's a risk of gang life. It’s sad how many innocent people are killed in the gang shooting crossfire, many times kids. People get upset but as time goes on, they forget about it until the next killing.

This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. I do hope it doesn’t happen to the little girls across the street and especially not to my kids.

Philip