Our America: Part II

The incident involved four kids—two victims: five-year-old Eric Morse and his eight-year-old brother, Derrick; and two assailants: a ten-year-old named Johnny and an eleven-year-old named Tyrone.

Now my kids don’t have a chance to play. I don’t let them go out. I got to keep them in the house, and that’s detrimental for young people.

Kids that grow up in this environment and don’t see other things and don’t know of light beyond this tunnel of darkness—they don’t grow and they get stuck in this type of mentality.

Young soldiers, man. That’s all they are. Young mercenaries.

They intimidate the decent people who are on either side of a vacant unit until pretty soon they get driven away, and then the gang-bangers take over another unit and another unit, and before you know it you’ve got buildings that are seventy percent vacant.

I was around Chicago when they built the high-rises. And before they built them these were nice low-rise, low-density neighborhoods—single-story, two-flat buildings where everybody knew everybody.

Johnny was in trouble with the law because he didn’t have the right guidance to scold him and tell him, “No is no!” “Right is right!” “Wrong is wrong!”

His father was incarcerated.

I would say probably within the last six to eight months I've seen a real increase in the brutality of the crimes, and also younger kids doing the real brutal stuff.

Actually I’m sure that it couldn’t be an accident because of the way that it happened. It was premeditated, it was planned, it was thought out.

I can kind of understand it if somebody’s mad at somebody or wants revenge. I don’t like it, but I can understand the motivation. But now the motivations behind these things are getting less and less easy to understand.

You talk about Vietnam, and there was this whole history of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and I think that’s what we’re seeing now. Especially with kids this young.

And basically he had nowhere to live because Mom had got evicted from her apartment, so they were squatting in 3833—four of them in one bedroom.

But after I had been with him for a while, he was one of the most docile and nicest-acting persons that I have ever had any encounter with.

The children, you know, become somewhat cynical when things like this happen because of where they live and how they have to live.

The reason I’m saying that is that I don’t think that Johnny had been taught to deal with his feelings. He was impulsive.

Tyrone was less notorious than Johnny around the ’hood.

Especially if the father has instilled values in his kids and has always been there for them to show them the right way and the right things to do.

See, when you’re close to someone you get a feeling, and by me and my son being real tight, when I heard it over the radio I just had this premonition.

I just don’t want him to come out of this with that ruthless type of attitude. That’s what these walls do to you—they make you hard, they make you barren, they make you cold.

Right after the incident we had a candlelight vigil out in front of 3833 and hundreds of people marched all up and down The Wells with candles.

I don’t know if you ever met these guys, but Johnny was a little gangster. He was something. He would sit there and smirk in your face.

And Johnny’s mother condoned his behavior. As long as that was the case, Johnny was going to keep on doing what he was doing.

What do you think needs to be done to communities like The Wells to keep youth crimes from escalating?

I think stricter penalties for juveniles would be nice. We need to lock them up.

Before the days of October, was there any omens to indicate anything like this would happen?

Do you feel any animosity toward the parents of the young men for allowing them to do such a thing?

The next day, both of the boys were found delinquent (that’s what they call “guilty” in Juvenile Court) of first-degree murder.

I have a nephew that’s five and another nephew that’s three, and I’d hate to see something happen to them, but I couldn’t get mad at the perpetrators if they were brought up in this environment.

When young people around here are touched by violence, it changes their whole persona.