imported post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002688.html
Tron S. Johnson and
Terrance L. Sneed were the same age, grew up in the same neighborhood, attended the same high school and, police said, became crime statistics on opposite sides of the same handgun after a fight at a pizza restaurant one night.
Sneed is dead. Johnson, 22, is in the
Prince George's County jail, accused of killing him and two of Sneed's friends that night.
Johnson, a slight man who was training to be a barber, by all accounts did little to provoke the Feb. 3 fight. But when trash talk during the Super Bowl turned to fisticuffs, police said, he pulled a handgun from his jacket and fired at his attackers in the restaurant.
The triple slaying is part of a trend that county law enforcement officials call "wear and carry" killings: callous acts committed on little provocation, often in public settings by young men who carry guns as casually as they do pocket change.
The crimes are called wear-and-carry killings based on the statute outlining the penalties for wearing and carrying a weapon, authorities said.
Police statistics show that 1,739 guns were confiscated from suspects in the county last year, 407 more than five years ago. Most of the illegal-gun charges filed involve men ages 18 to 24, said county State's
Attorney Glenn F. Ivey.
"Some of the guys, if they are drug dealers . . . feel like they have to have a gun to protect themselves and their quote-unquote business transactions," Ivey said. "But there is a growing number who carry because there are no consequences. Some feel it is a status thing. Some say it's for protection."
A friend of Johnson's put it more simply: "If anybody ever tried to hurt me, I would shoot them. I'd rather be in prison than dead."
Most homicide victims in Prince George's are ages 18 to 24, as well. Of the 1,141 homicides from 1998 to 2007, 90 percent of the victims were black men, officials said, and 75 percent of those were in that age range.
National crime statistics also reflect that young black men are victims and suspects in homicides more than any other demographic group.
In December, Antonio Lonelle McGhee, 20, of the District was convicted of fatally shooting a 24-year-old Capitol Heights man who refused to give him a cigarette while standing in line at a restaurant. In February 2007, Ramsey N. "Ham" Bush, 24, of Oxon Hill was convicted of fatally shooting a 23-year-old friend who owed him $25. After the shooting, Bush took the money from the dying man's pocket.
"Everybody's got a gun," said Joseph J. Vince Jr., former chief of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives crime gun analysis branch. "Instead of getting upset and fighting or beating each other up, they're shooting each other."
Johnson came with his gun to the
Uno Chicago Grill in Largo on Feb. 3, police said. He was there for the Super Bowl, not to fight, he said through his attorney Stephen Gensemer.
That night, dozens of people milled about the pizzeria at the Boulevard at the
Capital Centre as they took in the game. The restaurant drew a lot of young men from the neighborhood.
There was Johnson, a Mitchellville resident who had grown up in the Landover area and graduated from Charles Herbert Flowers High School. He had had a few brushes with the law but no violent offenses, court records show. He had recently started barber school and dreamed of opening a chain of shops, his attorney said.
There also was Sneed, a Flowers dropout looking for a job and trying to find ways to spend more time with his 3-year-old daughter, said Sandra Sneed, his mother. That afternoon, he had stopped by his mother's apartment. He had told her he planned to go to Uno for the game. The Landover resident arrived at the restaurant with two friends:
Charles D. Harrison, 25, of Landover and
Curtis L. Poston, 26, of Temple Hills.
At some point, witnesses said, Poston began throwing barbs at Johnson.
"He tried ignoring them," Gensemer said of his client. "He tried reasoning with them. He tried joking around with them. He tried just verbally saying, 'Stop. Get away. Knock it off.' "
By the game's fourth quarter, witnesses said, Poston was taunting Johnson more aggressively.
At one point, Poston approached Johnson's table, with Sneed and Harrison in tow. There was an argument, then a fight. Tables were upended. Glasses and plates flew. As the brawl escalated, Johnson reached into his jacket. Shots rang out, sending screaming patrons running for the door; Poston and Sneed fell in the bar, witnesses said. Harrison bolted for the exit, but Johnson followed and shot him in the parking lot, authorities and witnesses said.
In a written statement released by his attorney, Johnson did not say whether he had a gun or whether he fired one.
"He verified accounts that he was not the one to throw the first punch and that it was members of the other group that initiated the fight," Gensemer said, referring to Johnson's statement to
The Washington Post.
Johnson's friend said Johnson never would have fired if he hadn't felt threatened. "They jumped Tron, basically," he said. "That's when Tron pulled out the gun."
The friend, 21, admitted to a reporter that he was armed. "I'm telling you now, I would have done the same thing," said the man, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. "There are people out here who want to hurt you. I carry a gun for that very reason."
The prevalence of guns in young hands takes away the opportunity for reason to prevail in such confrontations, said Vernon R. Herron, public safety director for Prince George's.
"All of these killings that we are seeing are just senseless acts," he said. "There hasn't been a homicide recently on the streets of Prince George's County that could not have been prevented if the perpetrator had just thought through what they were doing."
Former D.C. police chief Isaac Fulwood Jr., a member of the U.S. Parole Commission, said the "thug culture" portrayed in some music, music videos and movies has fanned interest in carrying guns. "And now with this thug mentality, we're seeing all these young people being killed by other young people, for nothing," he said.
Court records show that some of those involved in the Uno killings had been mixed up with guns before. Poston served no jail time after pleading guilty in 2004 to illegal possession of a handgun after he threatened to shoot men he had argued with over a football game in a Bowie park. Sneed served three days after pleading guilty to a handgun violation in 2003. Johnson, who was arrested three times on marijuana charges last year, was at a Landover rooming house where police conducting a raid found an illegal handgun in April 2007. He was not charged because authorities could not determine whether the gun was his.
Authorities said the number of youths carrying guns has increased because of lax penalties. Laws meant to curtail gun possession "have been watered down" to the point that they are rendered ineffective, said Vince, the former ATF agent who is a partner in Crime Gun Solutions, a Frederick-based company that collects and interprets gun-crimes data.
Because many of the gun cases are first offenses, officials said, they are often not prosecuted. When they are, judges are hesitant to impose stiff penalties, even as the number of young people caught with firearms increases, officials said.
"These guys do a cost-analysis thing," Ivey said. "And if the price of getting caught with a gun is relatively low -- they are not looking at any kind of jail sentence -- their concerns about getting caught can be outweighed by what they think are the benefits of carrying: sometimes to commit crimes, sometimes for status, sometimes for peer pressure."
To reduce gun crimes, some communities such as the District have instituted gun buyback programs, in which owners are paid to turn over guns. Prince George's, Baltimore and Richmond have handed over repeat gun offenders to federal court, where they often receive stiffer sentences and out-of-state prison time. Ivey asked judges last year to order a mandatory one-year jail sentence for anyone convicted of illegal possession of a handgun, even first-time offenders.
Herron said the answer is not only to impose strict penalties but also to encourage the community to turn in offenders. Fulwood said parents, too, need to be involved.
"If my son has a gun and he's living in my house, at some point I should know because I should be looking around," he said. "I guarantee you if the kids have guns, they have them in their homes."
Sandra Sneed said she does not think her son was involved with guns. Even as she mourned him, she bemoaned the gun violence that is taking so many young black men's lives.
"They were both so young," she said of her son and Johnson. "What could happen that would lead somebody to do this? Nothing could have been that bad."
Staff researchers Rena Kirsch and Meg Smith contributed to this report.
