Execution Style Killing By Minors

[Nomad]

By Nick Coleman, Star Tribune

Last update: April 19, 2007 – 9:13 PM



An atrocity like the one in north Minneapolis on Tuesday night -- two men walking home from a bar were robbed and shot in the head by punks -- is a bomb going off.

The evil execution of citizens going about their daily lives leaves holes in a city. If it happens only rarely, it is possible to pick up the pieces and recover and move on. But if it happens repeatedly, you wind up with a landscape where decent people no longer want to raise families.

On Penn Avenue, the Penn Best Steak House is still closed, more than two years after Frank Haynes, 21, and Raliegh Robinson, 68, were gunned down at dinner. On Lyndale and 33rd, Jerry's Flower Shop is still for sale, almost three years after florist Randy Sherer, 55, was killed by a crud who pretended he wanted to buy flowers for his mom. A few blocks north on Lyndale, the bouquets on the sidewalk where Courtney Brown, 15, was gunned down for a basketball jersey last September have blown away.

These are dead places that should have markers on them to tell passersby that, here, innocents died and a city kept its head in the sand.

Waldo's Bar, which used to be called the 46 Club, is at 46th and Lyndale N. It's a working man's bar, recently redecorated in knotty pine, the walls featuring photos of wrestlers, boxers and football players who have dropped in, and meat raffles on Thursdays and Saturdays. Waldo's was where the victims of Tuesday night's execution spent their last hours, and their last dollars, watching a Minnesota Wild playoff game and drinking beer before heading out into the night and into the path of stone-cold killers.

The murders occurred two blocks away, not at Waldo's. But the killings wounded the bar, too, and damaged the name of a place that didn't deserve to be associated with the actions of teenage killers on the loose.

A city is not just a collection of addresses. It is collection of connected lives, and accumulated losses. Tuesday night, another bomb went off.

"They spent their last couple of bucks here," said Waldo's manager, a 59-year-old woman named Rachel who was wiping tears from her eyes as she talked. "This is hard. Knowing they're gone. My night bartender is heart broke. We all are."

Rachel has worked at Waldo's for 30 years and has dreamed of buying it someday. She is angry that a TV station made it sound like she thinks her bar is a dangerous place.

It's not her bar she's afraid of. It's her city.

"I used to walk to work. Now I don't feel like I can do that anymore," she said. "I say a prayer every morning when I get up, which everyone should. A prayer that you can get through the day without something happening to you. These people keep me safe," she said, nodding toward half a dozen older guys, most of them veterans, who were drinking lunch. "I'm not afraid of being here. What I'm saying is you have to be afraid to come out your door."

There used to be a food plant across Lyndale, as well as a pre-fab housing plant. Working men lined up outside Waldo's at lunch. But in recent years, the jobs have moved away while poverty, neglect and crime have crept steadily through the northern neighborhoods of the city.

In 1992, a gun shop just up the street was robbed and two clerks, Timothy Foslien, 53, and Brian Maas, 36, were shot to death. There's a new business there now, but it's not one that draws live customers. To me, the place still has a bad feeling: a dead spot, where a bomb went off.

"You can see how the neighborhood has gone," Rachel says. "... These kids just blew those guys' heads off! What kind of mentality is that? Bring me back the days when the cops kicked your ass all the way to jail.

"My dream is turning into a nightmare. I wanted to buy this place, but I don't think I can now. Why are we not working more on this? We knew it was coming to this. Four murders this year have been outside north Minneapolis. All the rest have been here.

"What are we? "A dumping ground?"

[minks]

Do you think it's because over the years we have glorified gangsters like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde etc??

[RedGlitter]

Maybe its because the world has become too automated, leaving humanity stone cold. This is a symptom.

[minks]

RedGlitter;596930 wrote: Maybe its because the world has become too automated, leaving humanity stone cold. This is a symptom.


a bloody awful one too.