Everyone’s got a history. The environment in which you grew up forges and molds you, leaving an imprint on the person you are today.
Wellp, I’m not about to share my story.
No.
This is the story of a once-close friend I have not seen for almost 12 years.
I haven’t seen him for 12 years because he shot six people 11 years ago, and killed two of them.
Wait, back up, back up.
That’s the end of the story.
(British accent) To get to the haht of a story, you have to go back to the beginning.
When I was 6, there was a massive park next to my house. All the neighborhood kids would play there. On 3 electrical boxes, however, there were the letters tagged “L.V.M.” Like I said, we were just 6. We did not know that the park was a hangout of a gang called LVM. LVM died out when we were still kids, but that park remained there.
I was 12 when I first met Kevin. He was new to the school district. Funny looking kid. Fat, snotty-nosed, with the bushiest hair I’ve ever seen on a (insert-my-ethnicity) kid. Big and bulky for his age, he was quite overweight. I always thought he looked like a monkey—a gorilla, with his flaring nostrils and chimpish smile.
He started to hang out with me and my best friend, and we would just kick it at his house (his mom left him and his younger brother unsupervised) every day. This went on for a few years.
We were just normal 6th-grade kids. We’d play N64. We’d put on boxing gloves and have sparring matches in his living room. We’d go loitering at the elementary school he lived by, because sometimes, in the wooded areas, we’d come across a huge box of porno mags (ok, this only happened once. But we found 2 cardboard boxes full of Penthouses. At least 100 magazines! To us, this was like finding gold).
One day I distinctly remember is when Kevin, me, and our friend Dustin were playing basketball at that same elementary school, and Kevin tried to do a lay-up. As he did this, he yelled “AIR KEVIN!” and jumped--- then fell on his ass. Me and Dustin were laughing our asses off. I still remember Kevin’s woodchuck-looking face yelling “OWWWWW”.
Entering junior high, things started to change. LVM in the late 80’s/early 90’s was part of a general “gang-banging” culture that gripped my ethnicity around that time period. This was still present during the mid and late 90’s, and to the early 2000’s. The gang activity was the craziest in the late 80’s to mid 90’s, and gradually receded up until about 2005 or so. When I see high-school kids of my ethnicity now, however, (thank god), it seems the “gang-banging” culture that started in the late 80’s has finally receded. (they’re more like emo-rocker kids now).
Fast-forward a few months.
We were no longer kids playing N64, play-fighting, playing basketball, going to the movies, bike-riding, etc.
No.
It seemed so normal at the time, but if I think about it, this period was so violent and turbulent. I would not go four or five days without seeing a fight or being involved in one. Fights, jumpings, rumbles, people getting stabbed, etc. (I just deleted over 1,000 words detailing things I saw growing up. Let’s just say it was a very unusual.)
Still, this appeared "normal" at the time.
When we entered high school, the actual gangs came a-recruiting. My local hometown clique was by far the biggest, but there were Chinese gangs from the adjacent cities who would try to come to our high school to recruit.
In the first year of high school, everyone (but 4 or 5 guys) were scrambling to get “sponsored.” Not being sponsored pretty much meant you could get jumped at will, and you couldn’t do shit about it. How are you gonna fight 10 guys by yourself? People being people, some people abused this power.
Most of the home-grown youngsters were affiliated on some level with the local hometown crew. Those who had loyalties to other crews could expect the hometowners to start shit with them on a daily basis.
Kevin, being relatively new to the city (he moved over in 6th grade), didn’t have the political connections to link up with the big wheels in the local hierarchy. Instead of accepting the status quo, he decided to link up with an “outsider” gang.
The hometowners quickly noticed this, and I remember one day, at a Jack-in-the-Box, about 30 people were ready to beat Kevin’s ass. Kevin made one phone call, and he avoided an ass-beating. Such was the power of sponsorship.
The bushy-haired flaring-nostriled cheeky fat kid I knew had a huge chip on his shoulder: He wanted to be a shotcaller. He started acting funny, constantly bad-mouthing sponsored hometown kids, promising he was going to show them “what’s up.”
He moved schools, and linked up with this other guy named Tom. Tom had similar aspirations. They decided to start a gang called Triad Boyz. It was a small clique, just starting up, had maybe 6 or 7 founding members.
I woke up one day and left my house. The entire neighborhood was out; yellow “Caution” tape surrounded several homes.
The neighbors said there was a gunfight in our street the night before.
I didn’t really connect the dots; besides, it was still morning. I hadn’t seen Kevin in 2 or so weeks at that time. Ever since he started up his new gang, he had been a busy beaver.
Later in the day, I got a call from a good buddy of mine: Methhead Jeff. (In retrospect, Methhead Jeff was one of the weirdest people I’ve ever met in my life. He had presumably been sent over by a gang to recruit, but it seemed like he spent most of his time smoking meth and weed. He would take swigs of tequila in the bathroom between periods 2 and 3, smoke meth all through lunch break, and smoked copious amounts of weed. Years later, I ran into him at a McDonald’s, where he spent hours talking into a walkie-talkie… with no one on the other end.)
Methhead Jeff: “ Yo, that shooting on your street? I hear some (insert local home-town) got capped. Kevin’s crew was behind it.”
This blew my mind. First off, if it was local home-town clique, it was probably someone I knew. Us hometowners had virtually grown up with each other, through grade school. Second, I didn’t think Kevin would ever turn into a killer. I mean, the kid I knew would barely jump people. He didn’t brawl much. He also got scared a lot during situations of impending violence, so I didn’t understand how he would be capable of blasting people.
Methhead Jeff gives me the lowdown. Kevin and his new clique had been drinking at a local Asian bar when they “hit up” some group they thought were <insert-local-hometown-clique-name>. Remember the chip Kevin had on his shoulder about being outside of the establishment? With his new gang formed up, he was eager-beaver to start exacting some revenge.
The group and the Triad Boyz agreed to meet at the park with the LVM tags (now since scrubbed off) around midnight. They had a rumble. The Triad Boyz were getting the worst of it. Their opponents pulled out bats and swords from the trunks of their cars and were threatening to smash the shit out of the Triad Boyz.
Kevin’s gang got into their car and fled. Their opponents gave chase. Kevin’s gang (in 2 cars) pull up into the cul-de-sac of my street, but their opponents walled them off with their convoy of 3 cars. They exit their cars, bats in tow, to beat the shit out of the Triad Boyz.
Kevin’s superior gives him a phone-call saying one thing: “Blast them.”
So Kevin pops up out of the sun-roof and starts shooting. 2 people eventually die of their gunshot wounds.
Kevin was 16 years old.
Methhead Jeff assures me this is what happened last night.
I tell him I gotta go, because my fuck-buddy who I’ll call Madeline (Madeline was the girl I lost my v-card to lol) is blowing up my pager. She lived next to Kevin a city away. I call Madeline, and Madeline asks “what’s going on with your boy Kevin?” and I go “what? What’s going on?” and she says “ I just saw five-oh come and take him away.”
Hmm. Maybe Methhead Jeff knew what he was talking about.
In any case, this story became widely known amongst the hometowners, and Kevin’s fate was sealed. Nobody ever knew what happened to him.
When I entered grad school, I was given access to a specialized database. One night, because my brain was fatigued from too much research, I decided to search for Kevin’s fate. Was he out? Did he get away? Was he executed?
I pulled out the case, and read it. Reading it confirmed much of what “Methhead Jeff” had told me. The incident describes both the park and the cul-de-sac on my street, which is quite eerie to me. Kevin’s attorneys managed to delay the trial for 6 years.
It turned out the victims were NOT affiliated with my hometown. At all. They were just a random group of friends drinking when they were accosted by Kevin’s Triad Boyz.
I won’t post the link to the case here. The case mentions many names of people I know, and I’ll respect their privacy.
Here is the general article in the Orange County Register listing what kind of sentences the “Triad Boyz” eventually got: http://articles.ocregister.com/2006-12-08/cities/24757909_1_gang-member-murder-and-street-terrorism-gang-related .
In 2006, Kevin was booked into Folsom State Prison.
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