Killings in Allegheny spiked this summer
74 homicides and counting since January
Thelma Jones was washing dishes one night in late August when she heard gunshots in the woods outside her Wilkinsburg home.
“It was so close it sounded like it hit my back door,” said Ms. Jones, 76, who “dropped everything I was doing and left the water on.”
She called police. But days passed before neighbors, alarmed by a foul odor, discovered the decomposing body of George Anthony Cox Jr., 22, of Homewood, the 10th homicide victim of the year in Wilkinsburg, a borough that saw just two killings in all of 2011.
Wilkinsburg was among For an interactive map showing all the homicides in Allegheny County, see the online version of this story at post-gazette.com the communities hardest hit by a spate of violence throughout Allegheny County this summer. Pittsburgh and county homicide detectives investigated 47 slayings between May and August of this year, compared with 26 during the same period the year before, when, investigators have said, violence was unusually low. As of Friday, Allegheny County, including Pittsburgh, had clocked 74 homicides since January, compared with 76 throughout all of 2011, by the medical examiner’s count.
Although the causes and cures remain the source of debate, the effects were
acutely felt by people such as Ms. Jones, who has lived on Sherman Street for 47 years and is dismayed by her community’s decline. While police and community leaders searched for ways to curb the gunfire, Ms. Jones was trying something else.
“It keeps you praying,” she said. “I thought about all of my grandchildren. I thought, Lord, what would I have done if it was one of them?”
Mr. Cox’s body was found in an overgrown yard the morning of Sept. 1, but detectives believe he was shot in the face and chest as early as Aug. 28. Police said his killing was similar to that of many young men this summer in Wilkinsburg, McKeesport and McKees Rocks, communities that have borne the brunt of the gunplay.
“The symptoms are the same,” Wilkinsburg police Chief Ophelia “Cookie” Coleman said of the death of Mr. Cox, who was serving house arrest while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a 2011 armed robbery. “It’s gang-related, drug-related. … He had a bulletproof vest on his chest when he died. The target was intended.”
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. estimated that 90 percent of this summer’s gun violence was drugrelated, saying recently that “people are getting more aggressive in terms of ripping off other drug dealers.” He said teams of investigators have been assigned to look into the drug trade and the feuds it spawns in communities such as Braddock, North Braddock, Wilkinsburg and Homestead, but he declined to elaborate, citing concern that it would jeopardize their efforts.
Other killings, authorities say, are the result of feuds among groups of young people, some of them surprisingly petty.
“A lot of them are drug or territory type, or some of them are just as silly as saying something to a person who then perceives it in the wrong manner,” Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. Witnesses’ refusal to aid in investigations, he added, makes cases difficult to solve and motives a challenge to understand. “It’s been our experience that in the greater majority, the victim and the killer were known to each other.”
That might have been the case the night of Aug. 24, when 15-yearold Emery Lamberto was fatally wounded during a gun battle on Wallace Avenue near Coal Street in Wilkinsburg. Two other people were shot in the firefight, during which bullets were fired from at least two weapons, Chief Coleman said. Among those to brandish a gun was Mr. Lamberto, who, the chief said, had been “on our radar a long time.”
“We’re looking at situations where there are feuds going on in the neighborhood, people who once were friends are now falling out,” said Chief Coleman, whose officers have stepped up patrols in light of the violence, paying special attention to curfew violators with the hope that pulling them off the streets will keep them from shooting or being shot. Although the entire community is not to blame for the violence, she added, everyone is put at risk by a small but aggressive criminal element whose intentions are not always clear.
For example, police don’t know why Timothy Boyd, 41, was shot to death early Aug. 9 by one of three young men who passed him as he walked home on Wilkinsburg’s Pitt Street. From the looks of it, the same thing could have happened to anyone, said Ms. Jones’ son, Reginald.
Pittsburgh and county homicide detectives have investigated five double homicides this year, two of which were in Wilkinsburg. In one of those Da’Shawna Gibson, 24, and Michael Black, 23, were killed there in July by a man who police said was a jealous paramour.
The Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire, a street preacher who has been working in communities throughout the county, especially Wilkinsburg, said the feuding seems to be intensifying, and “there are certain families who have been instigators.” Rev. Stoudemire conducts “street patrols” in which he and other volunteers roam an area’s rough spots, knocking on doors and talking to young men hanging on street corners.
“They’re scared, they’re frustrated, they’re angry,” he said. “A few are comfortable with it because it’s another day in the ’hood, and it gives them something to do.”
As news of Mr. Cox’s death spread through his neighborhood, so did anger and concerns of further violence.
“I just can’t believe it happened,” said Mary Sherrill, who lives next door to Mr. Cox’s mother and said he was as close to her as a son. “Everyone is so upset, they just don’t know what to do.”