Killer Kids

I'm about five-foot-eight, 120 pounds. Football used to be my thing, but I haven't played the last two years. They put a big air conditioner in a chain-link box where I used to plant mangoes and collard greens in my dad's back yard. I still like to draw cartoons, go swimming at the beach, and watch movies. Chess is cool too, I guess. I play with my godmother whenever she comes by. For breakfast I like fruit punch, Garcia's sausage, and chicken noodle soup. I'm pretty much good to go every day with jeans, a sweater, and my Nike slides.

I go to Brownsville Middle School. Eighth grade kind of sucks, you know what I mean? I haven't been going lately. They sent a letter to my dad saying I missed a bunch of days. Thing is, I haven't been staying with my dad much, a couple days a month maybe. I stay at my friends' places mostly. This past week, I've been sleeping on the couch at Latoya's place. She's 21. I'll be fifteen next October.

Homicides are on the rise in cities across the nation, but few increases have been as dramatic as that in Miami-Dade County. After years of steady decline, the murder rate in Miami-Dade spiked 40 percent from 2005 to 2006, making it the bloodiest twelve-month stretch in almost a decade. Much of the carnage has been in cities and neighborhoods such as Miami Gardens, North Miami Beach, Opa-locka, and Little River. Most of the victims are young black men. Many are teenagers. Of last year's 260 murder victims, more than one third were under the age of 25; 41 were under the age of twenty, more than double the number of teenagers killed the previous year.

In one of the most dramatic slayings, nineteen-year-old Luckson Branel and his friends, Atron Kelly, age twenty, and Edwin Terma, age 21, died this past June when the van they were riding in was surrounded by masked gunmen and sprayed with bullets in Allapattah.

In October a seventeen-year-old Carol City High School dropout allegedly shot a popular shop teacher to death in Miami Gardens.

During a particularly violent few weeks this past December, seventeen-year-old Rachel Louis, an aspiring midwife, died after gunmen in a passing car showered her North Miami Beach home with at least 25 bullets. Days later another drive-by shooting claimed sixteen-year-old Myckenley "Mike" Barjon as he hung out with friends a block from his Miami Gardens home. Before Barjon's family had buried him, another sixteen-year-old, Volny Eugene, was left to die from gunshot wounds in Little River.

The new year brought another wild daylight ambush: Gunmen with assault rifles riddled an SUV with bullets, killing Sheena Pierre, age 21, and her boyfriend, Enel Jean, age 22. Jean's grandmother was severely wounded in the shooting.

Last month a seventeen-year-old was among four wounded and one dead after a shooting at a house next door to a child's birthday party in Little River.

Each time a young person is gunned down in Miami, Queen Brown feels her own wound torn open. Brown's 24-year-old son, Eviton, died this past October when the car he was sitting in was plastered with bullets. Eviton had been a star football player at Norland High School, and was a recent father and a member of 5000 Role Models of Excellence, a mentoring program for young black men. Brown thinks her son was mistaken for his cousin who, Brown believes, had criminal dealings. The case remains unsolved.

Instead of retreating into her grief, Brown started a radio program to raise awareness and encourage people to speak out about the rising tide of death. "If Lil' Kim can come out of the courthouse and say, 'Don't snitch,' I can come out of the funeral home and say, 'Tell it'." Every Sunday at noon, Brown's show, "What's Going On?", takes to the airwaves on WTPS-AM 1080. She encourages callers to think about both sides of the tragic equation: victim and killer. Prison isn't the only answer, she says: "We can't throw our kids away."

Brown would welcome the chance to meet her son's killer. "I'd ask him what made him feel his only choice was to kill," she says. She also wants to extend her hand to the killer's mother. "I feel at this point we both lost our sons. I know we're both crying at night."

I stop by my dad's place after school sometimes. He lives in the Annie Coleman projects up on 63rd Street — just a few blue buildings, two floors each, rusty screen doors, everything looks the same. There's a wire you gotta pull off the front gate and then put back on again every time you come in. Dad's apartment is pretty small, just dad's room, a living room with a saggy black couch and chair, and a kitchen with no space really.

I've got a PlayStation 2 there. I stay up late with my cousin Quitta — that's short for Chiquitta, she lives there sometimes too — playing Madden Football and Mortal Kombat, my favorite. Dad always comes out of his room and tells us to turn off the TV. We're supposed to be asleep, he says. So I pretend like I'm gonna crash on the inflatable mattress in the living room and then, when dad closes his door, I turn on the TV again.