11/4/2023 0 Comments Russell peeler jrAt the funeral, grievers bellowed amens when the Rev. "We may develop around it, but that subculture hasn't disappeared." The residents are sick of it. "There's still a subculture of drugs and guns," says state senator Alvin Penn. The murder rate is down a bit in Bridgeport, but other violent crimes aren't. At B.J.'s funeral last week, a family friend made the point without numbers: "Some of us men, grown men, can't stand up. A 1996 federal study found that law officers in eight urban areas reported that violent acts of witness intimidation "occur on a daily or weekly basis." In Los Angeles a stunning 1,000 homicides in the first half of the decade went unsolved because no one stepped forward. When gang leaders commandeered swaths of Bridgeport and other cities in the early 1990s, the never easy task of finding witnesses became all but impossible. To know what a remarkable kid he was, one has to understand the community around him. Brown was reportedly worried about helping the law. Prosecutors planned to call him as the key witness in what was now to be Peeler's murder trial.ī.J. ![]() agreed to tell authorities what he knew about guns and blood. That left only one witness, a third-grader whose smile was sunny and persistent, who should have had no cares but to tell his jokes and read a favorite book, Double Trouble in Walla Walla. The state probably would have had a tidy case against Peeler, but Snead was murdered before he could testify who had shot at him. Peeler and Snead knew each other and were said to be fighting over money. Police charged Russell Peeler with the attempted murder both Snead and B.J. A bullet grazed Snead's forehead and broke glass that cut B.J. One summer day in 1997, Rudolph Snead, his mother's boyfriend, had picked B.J. ![]() His mom Karen Clarke, 30, was shot twice in the back. One week earlier, Leroy-an eight-year-old whom family called B.J.-was shot in the back and head as he and his mother raced up their stairs, trying in vain to escape an intruder. ![]() Don't let Prince Leroy's death go in vain!" "There's an insatiable appetite for blood.the blood of our princes. Courtney Williams, a phalanx of fellow ministers behind him hollering agreement, along with worshippers who sobbed and shouted. "Violence is let loose like a wild boar on our streets!" thundered the Rev. So by the time 600 arrived for the funeral at Refuge Temple Church of God, on Main Street, it seemed as though God had forgotten this place, a small city with big-city problems. The ice closed schools and slicked streets in Bridgeport, Conn., and residents slid helplessly and angrily through their daily tasks. Gritty, wet snow fell on the day the town said goodbye to Karen Clarke and Leroy Brown Jr.
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