Another One Bites The Dust
Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 3:39 pm
Ill be attending a candle light vigil tomorrow night. A 15 yr old boy was murdered for his shirt and shoes. I dont know what the real problem is except the mother of this teen is blaming it on strung out and addicted parents. That seems like as good a place to start as any. Two weeks ago it was a pizza delivery guy gunned down in the same neighborhood. Three weeks before that it was another teen hit by a stray bullet. He was in his senior yr looking at his choice of basketball scholarships. Last yr it was a child, a grade school girl sitting at her dining room table doing her homework. She died there by a stray bullet.
Im going tomorrow because Im sick from this. Im also going because Im tired of me, complaining, feeling bad, wishing it wasnt like this, and then never doing anything. I never get involved in the things I think someone should be involved in. Im going to talk with the people that live there. I dont know what Im going to say, but I have to say something.
Help sought in finding Minneapolis boy's killers
A grieving family and Minneapolis police are asking for help in solving the death of a teenager shot over an athletic jersey.
Terry Collins, Star Tribune Last update: September 06, 2006
On Saturday, Courtney Brown attended Bible study class and later that evening shot hoops with his older brother and cousins at a friend's house.
The 15-year-old was on his way home from playing basketball about 9:30 p.m. when, police said, he was shot to death on a north Minneapolis street after a group of boys brandished a gun and demanded his "throwback" blue and orange college basketball jersey and matching sneakers.
He was trying to take off the jersey when he was shot, his aunt said.
"We will hunt you down and find you," Lt. Lee Edwards warned the killers during a news conference Tuesday at the shooting site at Lyndale and Dowling Avs. N. "So it's best that you give yourselves up."
Courtney was the 44th homicide victim this year, and, Edwards said, "he was a good kid."
He was joined by interim Police Chief Tim Dolan and other police and community leaders, who repeatedly called the killing "terrible and senseless" and urged the public -- especially reluctant and possibly scared youths -- to help identify Courtney's killers.
"We plead for the community to try to help us so we can get them off the street," Dolan said, adding that Courtney's death should be felt with the same outrage as the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Michael Zebuhr during a robbery in the trendy Uptown area nearly six months ago.
Courtney would've started his sophomore year Tuesday at Edison High School in northeast Minneapolis. At Edison, students and faculty members were still stunned by the news, Principal Larry Lucio said.
More than a dozen of his friends went to a mall after school to get T-shirts with a picture of Courtney smiling and his nickname, "Midnite."
One classmate said Courtney, who played on the school's freshman basketball team last year, could usually be seen walking around, smiling and joking.
"He was nice and goofy," said La'Clisha Warren, 15, a sophomore. "He can get on your nerves and make you laugh all at the same time."
His aunt, Jacquette Gage, said Courtney, the second-oldest of seven children, was a courteous, God-fearing young man who came from a close-knit, spiritual family.
His mother, who cited her beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness in declining to give her name, offered a more blunt description about her son.
"He was a loving person, not a thug nor a gangbanger," she said. "He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Courtney's older brother, Anthony Brown, told KMSP-TV, Channel 9, that after Courtney was shot, he heard a voice say, "You weren't supposed to shoot him. You were supposed to scare him."
Gage said many of Courtney's friends spent most of Sunday outside his house.
"They were inconsolable," Gage said. "They are just so hurt by what happened. His mother, who is in pain herself, even tried to comfort them."
A gift from his father
Courtney's mother said he and his older brother, Anthony Brown, who also attends Edison, had spent the summer in Iowa with their father, who bought Courtney the jersey.
She said his father was reluctant to buy it at first but relented because Courtney was not a troublesome child.
The vintage jerseys, popularly known as "throwbacks," are replicas that could cost upwards of $400, depending on its design, the player's popularity or its availability.
Athletic jerseys have been cited as at least part of the motive for robberies, burglaries and homicides elsewhere. For example:
• Two men were charged in December 2004 with killing a freshman near Florida's Edward Waters College in what police described as an attempt to steal money and a sports jersey that Johnathan Glenn, 18, was wearing, according to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
• Thieves smashed in the front door of a retail store in Edmonton, Alberta, in March 2005, and made off with up to 30 NFL jerseys, as many as 15 T-shirts and five University of Alberta Golden Bears jerseys, according to the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The thieves didn't touch the cash register, the paper reported.
• In Kansas City, a sports jersey was believed to have caused a disturbance involving about 70 teens and adults at a residence, the Kansas City Star reported in May 2005. That dispute then led to the shooting of a 14-year-old boy and an infant, the newspaper said.
'My brother's been shot'
The Minneapolis shooting has shaken residents around the 3800 block of Lyndale Avenue N.
Drew Homan was moving into a house and coming down the stairs when he heard a kind of muffled pop-pop-pop, he said. Some of his friends out on the street told him that somebody was shot and to call 911.
By the time Homan got outside, he saw the victim on the ground, barely moving. Two other young males stood nearby, one of them crying and yelling, "My brother's been shot!" Homan said.
Officers and paramedics pronounced Courtney dead, eliciting a scream from the brother, Homan said.
A similar cry was soon heard from a woman down the block who was waiting behind the police tape, neighbors said.
"Just to hear her scream, the piercing sound of her voice. ... You can't erase that memory," neighbor Pamela Christopher said.
Courtney's mother issued a warning to other parents who are raising well-behaved kids.
"Keep a close watch on them, because those other kids whose parents are strung out on drugs are killing the good ones," she said.
His mother said she knows he's in a better place.
"I will see him again," she said.
Police asked those with information to call 612-962-TIPS or the homicide unit at 612-673-2941.
Staff writer Tom Ford and researcher Jim Phillips contributed to this report. Terry Collins
Im going tomorrow because Im sick from this. Im also going because Im tired of me, complaining, feeling bad, wishing it wasnt like this, and then never doing anything. I never get involved in the things I think someone should be involved in. Im going to talk with the people that live there. I dont know what Im going to say, but I have to say something.
Help sought in finding Minneapolis boy's killers
A grieving family and Minneapolis police are asking for help in solving the death of a teenager shot over an athletic jersey.
Terry Collins, Star Tribune Last update: September 06, 2006
On Saturday, Courtney Brown attended Bible study class and later that evening shot hoops with his older brother and cousins at a friend's house.
The 15-year-old was on his way home from playing basketball about 9:30 p.m. when, police said, he was shot to death on a north Minneapolis street after a group of boys brandished a gun and demanded his "throwback" blue and orange college basketball jersey and matching sneakers.
He was trying to take off the jersey when he was shot, his aunt said.
"We will hunt you down and find you," Lt. Lee Edwards warned the killers during a news conference Tuesday at the shooting site at Lyndale and Dowling Avs. N. "So it's best that you give yourselves up."
Courtney was the 44th homicide victim this year, and, Edwards said, "he was a good kid."
He was joined by interim Police Chief Tim Dolan and other police and community leaders, who repeatedly called the killing "terrible and senseless" and urged the public -- especially reluctant and possibly scared youths -- to help identify Courtney's killers.
"We plead for the community to try to help us so we can get them off the street," Dolan said, adding that Courtney's death should be felt with the same outrage as the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Michael Zebuhr during a robbery in the trendy Uptown area nearly six months ago.
Courtney would've started his sophomore year Tuesday at Edison High School in northeast Minneapolis. At Edison, students and faculty members were still stunned by the news, Principal Larry Lucio said.
More than a dozen of his friends went to a mall after school to get T-shirts with a picture of Courtney smiling and his nickname, "Midnite."
One classmate said Courtney, who played on the school's freshman basketball team last year, could usually be seen walking around, smiling and joking.
"He was nice and goofy," said La'Clisha Warren, 15, a sophomore. "He can get on your nerves and make you laugh all at the same time."
His aunt, Jacquette Gage, said Courtney, the second-oldest of seven children, was a courteous, God-fearing young man who came from a close-knit, spiritual family.
His mother, who cited her beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness in declining to give her name, offered a more blunt description about her son.
"He was a loving person, not a thug nor a gangbanger," she said. "He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Courtney's older brother, Anthony Brown, told KMSP-TV, Channel 9, that after Courtney was shot, he heard a voice say, "You weren't supposed to shoot him. You were supposed to scare him."
Gage said many of Courtney's friends spent most of Sunday outside his house.
"They were inconsolable," Gage said. "They are just so hurt by what happened. His mother, who is in pain herself, even tried to comfort them."
A gift from his father
Courtney's mother said he and his older brother, Anthony Brown, who also attends Edison, had spent the summer in Iowa with their father, who bought Courtney the jersey.
She said his father was reluctant to buy it at first but relented because Courtney was not a troublesome child.
The vintage jerseys, popularly known as "throwbacks," are replicas that could cost upwards of $400, depending on its design, the player's popularity or its availability.
Athletic jerseys have been cited as at least part of the motive for robberies, burglaries and homicides elsewhere. For example:
• Two men were charged in December 2004 with killing a freshman near Florida's Edward Waters College in what police described as an attempt to steal money and a sports jersey that Johnathan Glenn, 18, was wearing, according to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
• Thieves smashed in the front door of a retail store in Edmonton, Alberta, in March 2005, and made off with up to 30 NFL jerseys, as many as 15 T-shirts and five University of Alberta Golden Bears jerseys, according to the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The thieves didn't touch the cash register, the paper reported.
• In Kansas City, a sports jersey was believed to have caused a disturbance involving about 70 teens and adults at a residence, the Kansas City Star reported in May 2005. That dispute then led to the shooting of a 14-year-old boy and an infant, the newspaper said.
'My brother's been shot'
The Minneapolis shooting has shaken residents around the 3800 block of Lyndale Avenue N.
Drew Homan was moving into a house and coming down the stairs when he heard a kind of muffled pop-pop-pop, he said. Some of his friends out on the street told him that somebody was shot and to call 911.
By the time Homan got outside, he saw the victim on the ground, barely moving. Two other young males stood nearby, one of them crying and yelling, "My brother's been shot!" Homan said.
Officers and paramedics pronounced Courtney dead, eliciting a scream from the brother, Homan said.
A similar cry was soon heard from a woman down the block who was waiting behind the police tape, neighbors said.
"Just to hear her scream, the piercing sound of her voice. ... You can't erase that memory," neighbor Pamela Christopher said.
Courtney's mother issued a warning to other parents who are raising well-behaved kids.
"Keep a close watch on them, because those other kids whose parents are strung out on drugs are killing the good ones," she said.
His mother said she knows he's in a better place.
"I will see him again," she said.
Police asked those with information to call 612-962-TIPS or the homicide unit at 612-673-2941.
Staff writer Tom Ford and researcher Jim Phillips contributed to this report. Terry Collins
