A killer went on trial today in Colorado, and here in Philly a killer's trial just came to an end. In the days to come you will hear a lot about the trial of the killer in Colorado, but I would like to tell you a little bit about the trial of our killer here in Philly. "Living in the Point Breeze section of South Philadelphia, Allen Moment Jr. understood no-snitch culture.
Moment stayed true to the code, even after Jan. 20, 2006, when he was ambushed outside his house on Pierce Street, near 22d, shot a dozen times, and left for dead in his girlfriend's arms.
Two years later, Moment was still alive and still at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A month in a coma, multiple operations to repair his riddled bowels, and one infection after another had atrophied his muscles. He was a quadriplegic.
Moment lingered until Aug. 6, 2008, when he died of a final drug-resistant infection at age 24. But before he died, Moment finally told his mother and uncle - and police detectives - who had shot him: his cousin Marvin Flamer, now 37; Flamer's nephew Nafeas Flamer, 23; and Nafeas Flamer's friend Hakim Bond, 23.....
Allen Moment lived in an area of South Philadelphia known for corner gangs that settled disputes with guns.
According to Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax, Moment had a problem. He knew and was friends with people from his corner. But the Flamers - his father's extended family - lived near 24th and Ellsworth.
There was bad blood between young men from the two corners, and in early 2006, the fever was up.
Torn between the two groups, Moment tried to play peacemaker. At one point, Sax said during the trial last week, Moment took a gun from Nafeas Flamer. Then someone shot at Flamer and word was that Flamer suspected Moment had "set him up."
Moment sold drugs - court records show he was sentenced to two nine- to 23-month prison terms in 2003 - and on Jan. 20, 2006, he was outside his house when his girlfriend, Aisha Williams, asked him to get crack cocaine for her mother.
According to Williams' trial testimony, Moment said he would deliver the crack to her house, and she turned and began walking away.
"I got to the corner and heard shots, and I thought, he's shooting at somebody or getting shot," Williams said.
Williams said she turned and saw Moment staggering toward her: "I said, 'I thought you got hit.' He said, 'I did. Don't leave me, I don't want to die.' "
Williams did not die, but neither did he get well.
And he would not tell anyone who shot him. He knew, as Sax said, that "Snitches get way more than stitches."
Let me jump in here: Did you read that? Aisha asked him (Mr. Moment) to get crack for her mother. SHE ASKED HIM TO GET CRACK FOR HER MOTHER! Okay, let's read on:
"...Moment's dying declaration was recorded Feb. 14, 2008. Though he lived almost six months more, Moment had already received the grim news from HUP surgeon Carrie Sims. He was dying, Sims said. An infection resistant to all drugs could not be stopped.
The video shows Moment propped up in bed, a large tube attached to his nose. He barely opens his eyes. He nods or blinks as a detective shows photos and asks him to confirm his identifications. Only once does he struggle to rasp aloud a reply.
It wasn't much - maybe three minutes - but Sax needed all the evidence he could get because the intimidation and threats did not end when Moment died.
Two years later, shortly before the start of the trial of the Flamers and Bond, Abdul Taylor was killed.
Taylor, 32, a former high school basketball star and popular Kingsessing recreation center coach, came on the scene right after Moment was gunned down.
He did not see the shooters, but Taylor knew many young men from the basketball courts. He kept his ears open and learned enough to become a key witness against Moment's killers.
On May 6, 2010, Taylor went to a corner store for his mother and was shot dead in front of his house at 23d and Ellsworth Streets.
DNA evidence led to 21-year-old Derrick White, who was charged with killing Taylor to keep him from testifying. Sax prosecuted, and on Feb. 29, a jury convicted White of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death...
Sax's key live witness was Moment's girlfriend.
Williams, now 34, identified the Flamers and Bond in statements to detectives after the shooting. But by Tuesday, when she took the witness stand, Williams had long since "gone south" - recanted the identifications and blamed detectives for creating the statements.
"Because you people don't let me alone!" Williams replied when Sax asked her why she had signed her initial statements to detectives as well as photographs of the three shooters she identified.
"A friend of mine is dead," Williams said. "If I could help you, I would, but I didn't see nothing."
Let me jump in here: "I didn't see nothing." I am not going to rip the "no- snitch culture", that's just too easy. I understand that there are folks living in these communities with real fears of retaliation. (Look what happened in the story to poor Abdul Taylor.) But that is a part of the problem. Sadly, it's a tragic nonending cycle.
The good news is that a killer was found guilty last Friday, and he will never walk the streets of Southwest Philly ever again. The bad news is that there are too many more like him waiting to strike. [Read the full story here.]
*Pic from Philly.com
22 comments:
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Pssst field, don't tell nobody that I been done told you this:
FCUK them NGGIERS!!
`
I'm pretty sure this is going to be an episode of Law & Order eventually.
Val
"According to Assistant District Attorney Richard Sax, Moment had a problem. He knew and was friends with people from his corner. But the Flamers - his father's extended family - lived near 24th and Ellsworth."
There is such an insane level of tribalism in the midst of our cities. People are ready to kill for their block. WTF?
field wrote:
Cheering for the economy to fail is not how republicans will win the WH.
Again you show your political naivete. People vote against the incumbent when they believe he's at the root of their economic woes. Four years of Obama have produced MORE economic problems with NONE of his promised recovery.
Moreover, it's obvious to most people that blaming Bush is an excuse that's exceeded its shelf life.
I am pretty sure that most Americans have figured out exactly what is going on.
If they realize the government is the wrench in the works, then they've gotten to the root of the problem. If they believe more government is the answer they should consider moving to Cuba or North Korea, where Maximum Government is how it's done.
But good luck to you and your boy, Flipper.
Romney knows how the economy works and how to revitalize it. For those who want a better economy, Romney's the candidate. For those who want more of what we have today, then Obama's their boy.
If he loses in November will you move to Canada?
You must have me confused with Alec Baldwin or Sean Penn, liberals who've promised to leave, but, when the time came, never called the movers.
It's hard to predict how much damage a second Obama term might inflict, but it would inflict damage. Even a rebounding global economy would be slow to lift the US.
In fact, a recovery in other parts of the world would encourage more US companies to move some operations to those better precincts. Obama is clearly incapable of leading the US to a recovery and thereby lead the world toward greater prosperity.
Instead, he's reeling from the utter and total failure of his solar energy fiascos. He's pressing banks to make more loans to more deadbeats while threatening to punish banks if they make bad loans.
He has no idea what he's doing, mainly because he himself has never understood the economy and the people who advise him are even less competent.
field, after reading your post, I have to ask:
What the hell is wrong with YOU PEOPLE?
If this nonsense happened with the frequency of shootings in movie theaters, it would amount to a small overall death toll. But this is what YOU PEOPLE do every day.
And the proof is in the murder totals. Year after year.
YOU PEOPLE take the cake. YOU PEOPLE get the blue ribbon. The gold medal. It's all yours.
depressing.
myblackfriendsays, "depressing."
12:15 AM
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Dear Field, I knew it was a matter of time before some jealous Negro would try to steal the word "depressing" from me. Negroes have no damn boundaries.
Brotha Field, You know how important the word "depressing" and all it's variations are to me.
Please don't let some other FN Negro use my ID or any form of it whatsoever. Please keep your blog clean.
depressed Negro
Field, what I can't understand is why our folks allow this crap to continue?
Why can't we rise up and take our community, neighborhoods and streets back like the Republicans and Tea Party are taking back their country?
Field, I wanted to buy a FN T-shirt, but I realized I can't afford to wear a Field Negro T-shirt in public. I mean, people would know I read your blog. Being a black Repub, I would lose my car, house and white girlfriend.
However, I would feel safe buying a mug 'if' I had concrete evidence that you donate a portion of the dollars to charity. Do you keep receipts to prove that some of the money goes to charity? Do you file the profits you make from all your sales with the IRS?
Would you voluntarily release your taxes so that this could be verified....There must be a way we can work this out.
In some communities, the police are worse than the criminals, and these tend to be in the lower/underclass neighborhoods. These also tend to be darker.
There are a few reasons why the lighter skin folks do not pay attention to the happenings in these areas. First, many of the people labeled racist are ignorant. They do not understand why people want to kill each other, especially your relatives. They do not understand why someone would not want the police involved. They cannot fathom the police being part of the problem or being most of the problem. They have no actual knowledge of life in these neighborhoods.
There is racism in this country, and electing a black President did not change that. There is also bias, prejudice, color arousal, and hatred. There are a lot of white people who are ignorant of their racist tendencies. My sister was dating a black guy, and the things she would say were unbelievable. She was not hateful, but her ignorance was stunning.
When the problems in these communities make the news, they have been conditioned to keep quiet. It is better to say nothing. If they say the wrong thing, they will be accused of being "color aroused" or racist. They are glad that the problems of these communities are not in their community, but this insensitive attitude derives from their ignorance of life in these neighborhood. White middle class people would not tolerate this in their communities, and they do not understand why anybody else would tolerate it.
White folks have their own "people" in the lower/underclass, and they have their own issues. Many of them are similar, but white middle class people do not understand the white lower/underclass very much either.
The race hustlers, poverty pimps, and rich white liberals make things worse. They have created a tar pit at the bottom of society, and anybody who gets caught in it has little chance of escaping. (This has the curious effect of removing a substantial number of the competition, but that is another discussion.) The "War on Poverty" (liberals) and the "War on Drugs" (conservatives) have combined into the "War on the Lower/Underclass".
"Would you voluntarily release your taxes so that this could be verified....There must be a way we can work this out."
Nope. I am not running for office.
I see that the wingnut @10:55PM has all the talking points down. Glad to know he/she won't be moving, though. I want everyone to thrive here in America.
"field, after reading your post, I have to ask:
What the hell is wrong with YOU PEOPLE?"
"YOU PEOPLE?" As in humans? Americans? Men? I am afraid I don't know what you mean.
But I suspect that whatever is wrong with the people mentioned in the article is the same thing wrong with Kids who shoot up movie theaters, colleges, and high schools, just because.
No, I take that back; the kids who kill just because they can are actually worse.
Y'know... WE BLACK AMERICAN PEOPLE share a tremendous responsibility for the problems afflicting our communities. Continued accusations of "racism/t" and our addiction to victimization compound our problems.
It is NOT IN THE INTEREST of the "Black Church" to offer solutions sans "faith"; on the contrary, the "Black Church" MUST continue to inoculate its adherents with the sedative of piety - i.e., ignorance and helplessness.
Life on the Democratic plantation is poor, mean, and violent.
Every time an American gets a job, there is one more potential Republican. Every time an American gives up looking, a lifelong Democrat is born. This explains Obama’s economic policy in a nutshell, as well as the otherwise incomprehensible de facto repeal of the overwhelmingly successful welfare reform of the 1990s.
Under Obama’s rule, food stamp and disability rolls have been exploding. Already we are almost at the tipping point, where the takers outnumber the makers. To work for a living will be to accept the status of a slave who labors so that those who give the orders won’t have to.
As ever more become takers, this intolerably unjust system will quickly become unsustainable and collapse. No worries though; Big Government will be right there waiting to step in and provide.
How's that plantation life working out? Fifty years of BRA and billions if not trillions of dollars invested in the Negro Equality Project and the result is … what?
“The median wealth of white households is twenty times that of their black counterparts. Moreover, from 2005 to 2009, black wealth declined by 53 percent—in 2009, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth. African-American wealth was wiped out by the Great Recession, making it a tremendously destructive event for economic mobility among black families …”
Unlike the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Program which succeeded in putting Neal Armstrong on the frickin’ moon, the Negro Equality Project was an absolute total failure. An artificial affirmative action black middle class has it pretty good, but things are much worse for the majority of black Americans. Maybe we should try something else.
2 Lyndon's Johnson:
Word. Millions of blacks suffer in the slums so that idiots like "Dr." Reine can pretend to be educated professionals.
field disingenuously asks:
"YOU PEOPLE?" As in humans? Americans? Men? I am afraid I don't know what you mean.
Of course you know the identity of YOU PEOPLE. We all know.
As NY City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently said:
Ninety percent of all violent crime in NY City is committed by blacks and hispanics. But of the two, blacks commit far more than hispanics.
If there were no blacks in the US, the US murder picture would look a lot like it does in Europe, where the murder rate is low.
It must be that field is embarrassed by the facts. It can't be true that field is oblivious to the obvious and well documented facts.
So I suppose the field response will include something about white mass murderers. But all their killings added together result in a small number of total deaths.
However, as a percentage of headlines, they get almost 100%.
Lyndon Johnson, if blacks knew how to create a nation and build an economy, some of the richest countries on the planet would be found in Africa.
All they'd have to do is learn the basics of civilized life and then begin to extract the natural resources found in staggering abundance beneath the soil in many parts of Africa.
As has been said many times, Nigeria should be the Norway of Africa. But it's just another black nightmare nation where tribes battle it out each day.
What's the murder rate in these countries? It's so high that it's impossible to keep an accurate count. Also, no one cares about keeping an accurate count.
The facts only make each nation look bad. Terrible. Horrifying.
Dear Mr Field, if you won't release your taxes, then I can only assume that you are "hiding" something which could be illegal or is taking advantage of poor folks. I wouldn't be surprised that you have made millions finding loop holes in tax codes.
Therefore, I cannot buy anything from your Field Negro Store. I've seen this movie before with the former BET owner, and it ain't pretty how he made his billion.
It's a shame how that poor innocent boy died. It's terrible.
Obviously, Allen Moment Jr. wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Score one for Darwin.
"No Great Loss said...
Obviously, Allen Moment Jr. wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Score one for Darwin."
Writes someone who is more than likely married to his first cousin.
Now that's irony.
Dear commentor.....the riches countries are in Africa. You may have ment that the these countries are not to the standards of the Western countries. These countries have been pillaged for their marketable wealth for so long as well as institutional divide and conquer. Three Cs.....Christianity..Commerce....Control. That formular continues to thrives. Give the people what was stolen, conned from them. This sceme is at work....here in America. StillaPanther2
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