The [not so high profile] trial of another killer.

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

If a child falls in the hood and no one cares to hear about it....

..should we make a sound? Of course we should. We owe our children that much.

As my man Reggie Warrington [Dave Chappelle] told Buddy Love [Eddie Murphy] in the Nutty Professor; "it's time to attack black."

So here we go again. It seems like every now and then I have to go on one of these rants. My Killadelphia murder count on the sidebar of this blog is not enough. Black folks, unfortunately, have become numb to the senseless killing of our children by our children. So what if three more young men were murdered this past week in Philly? Or if well over thirty school aged children have been murdered in Chicago this year? (How come Oprah doesn't have a show about that? I guess Dr. Phil doesn't do grief counseling) We have come to expect it.

But every now and then there is a murder that shocks our collective conscience and plays itself into the national psyche. Instead of a line or two in the metro page of the local paper, it makes national news. Bryan Williams is talking about it, and middle A-merry-cas is watching it with their hands over their mouths. In the hood people are wondering what's the big deal. How come this one made the national news and all the others didn't?

Well maybe it's because this one played itself out on video like a twisted reality television show for all of us to see. -And in the president's hometown no less- Urban terrorist beating a young honor student to death. No remorse, no heart, and no hesitation. Like a pack of animals who have strayed far away from their human DNA. You have all seen the video by now. If you haven't maybe you should. And when you do, take a long hard look at those those urban terrorist and try to find something. Maybe a clue as to why they act the way that they do. Something. Anything. I looked. In fact, I am always looking.

Here is what I see whenever I look: Children-wait, I take that back; boys without fathers. Young men with no men in their lives. Young men being raised by the streets and all sorts of negative influences. Most of them are here compliments of some sperm donor who just kept getting up. Absent fathers who thought that mom had a fat ass and was a "hell a nice shot".

I never see those sperm donors in criminal court when the cases are being called and the defendant's are being led into the courtroom. Only girlfriends, grandmothers, and mothers. The only black males I see in the court rooms are the sheriffs. When I go into the home of a potential client, the only people I negotiate with are mothers and grandmothers. Again, there is never a sperm donor in sight. That is my reality, and it's better than any scientific study you can cook up from some fancy Ivy League school. Oh field, stop it, what do you expect these men to do? What about the women who hook up with them? What about them? I can't speak for the women. All I know is that more often or not she is the one left to raise the child by herself. The sperm donor is always long gone and nowhere around. Regardless of who zoomed who.

I am so sick of seeing the vigils, the teddy bears, and the prayer groups in front of crime scenes. Because the sad reality is that tomorrow, just like clockwork, some poor child will be snatched from us by an urban terrorist all over again.

Today, Al Sharpton,Newt Gingrich, and Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, toured the schools here in Philly. (Talk about strange bedfellows)They were here to praise the charter school system in our fine city and push for longer hours in school. That's all fine. But our schools could stay open twenty four hours a day and it wouldn't make a damn difference to the urban terrorist out here. The kids who want to learn will be there, and the others will keep doing what they are doing now: be disruptive, make it harder for the other kids, and create a poor overall learning environment.

But let's keep it real with each other. The schools can only do so much. Everything starts at home.

I know that I am preaching to the choir here, because most of you who read this blog with children don't need to here this. I am sure that your children are fine. But what about the rest of them? All of our children. A-merry-ca's children. (Well, black A-merry-ca's children, because I am quite sure that the rest of A-merry-ca would never claim them. They would much rather adopt a nice little Asian or Russian girl...let me stop.) How do we get to them? How do we stop the sperm donors? It's, for the most part, a question that is orotund in nature. Because as much as I have tried to figure it out, I swear that I don't know the answer.

Domestic terrorist and the people who encourage them.

Remember a few weeks ago when the wingnuts were wetting their sheets over reports that the Department of Homeland Security was warning of increased activity by right wing extremist groups? The rightwing rags like the Washington Times were all over it, and it became a rallying cry for the clowns at FOX entertainment and the tea party protesters.

Well, this past Sunday, a domestic terrorist took the life of a doctor who performed abortions-- while the man was leaving his church of all places-- And I was fully prepared to write about the right wing pretending to be outraged, but sadly, that wouldn't be true. They are not. In fact, go to some of the wingnut sites and read the comments; they are damn near dancing with glee. The jokes are coming fast and furious about the killer turning the tables and performing "a very late term abortion on the good doctor".

I have said it before and I will say it again: Domestic terrorist are a greater threat to this country than any external terrorist group could ever be. They are not profiled because they look like the "All American" boy next door. The puppet masters cannot be touched, while they get folks to do their dirty work, carry out assassinations and cold blooded killings. The puppet masters belong to political parties and main stream news organizations. They are free to spew their venom to the ignorant and uninformed, all the while giving them a scapegoat for all the problems in their miserable lives. The Jews. The blacks. The president. The democrats. Those damn abortion doctors. It didn't take much to push Scott Roeder over the edge, from all accounts the man might have already had some issues. But the Scott Roeders of the world are who the poppet masters want to reach. All it takes is one.

Oh come on field, stop it. Would you have written this about John Brown in 1859 when he raided the Harper's Ferry Arsenal and killed pro slavery people? Or would you have written like David Thoreau: "is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they are made? "

I wouldn't be writing at all, because I would have been one of the slaves that the "pro slavery" people would have had working against their will. But I am writing now, because those very same "god fearing" people who enslaved my people are the ones who kill abortion doctors because they happen to think it's against god's will. So yeah, to answer your question, I might not have been writing, but I would probably be right there with John Brown getting my beat down on.

If Timothy McVeigh wasn't rotting in hell or some similar place, he would be a FOX news analyst. Who better to give the FOX viewers an insight into the mind of the angry white male and how we can "take back our country"? I have been saying it on this site from day one, and I will continue to say it until folks realize how dangerous the folks at Radio Rwanda (AKA FOX News) are.

"Yes, I think we all know what this is. And if the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands ..."

Don't worry Mr. O'Rielly, the blood is on your hands now.