Clayton aghast at slayings of teens

Ricardo Mahone was willing to put up with Minnesota winters to escape the cycle of violence he saw around his Clayton County home.

By the time he graduated from Mundy’s Mill High School in Jonesboro two years ago, he had lost several friends to gunfire and a brother to prison on a robbery conviction. He thought he had escaped.

And then Mahone got a call from home on Election Day.

His 16-year-old sister, Rikia Ross, had been shot and killed.

Ross, of Riverdale, was the fourth Clayton County student to be gunned down in the past month.

“Our neighborhood is going crazy,” Mahone said from his Minnesota college campus last week.

Mahone, 20, said he worries about the safety of his little brother, Darius, a Pointe South Middle School student, and his neighborhood friends.

Gang violence is nothing new for Clayton County. In the past five years, more than a dozen teenagers have died in gang shootings.

The latest streak especially troubles the beleaguered Clayton school system, where school leaders have watched 3,000 students flee recently because of loss of Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation.

Now they worry about losing kids to gunfire and jail.

“It’s not about SACS. Lord help us if we can get to SACS,” Superintendent John Thompson said. “I wish it was about academics. It’s about life and death.”

School officials need to worry about parents pulling their children out for safety reasons, said Riverdale mother Evelyn Mgbemena.

Mgbemena, a nurse at Southern Regional Health System, and her husband have changed their work schedules so they can drive their five sons to school.

“I’ve been very scared,” she said as she picked up one son from Riverdale Middle School. “I don’t allow them to walk — even though they don’t like it.”

Three of Mgbemena’s sons attend Riverdale High School – a school that lost two students to shootings in the past month. She knows her children are safe when they are with her, but worries what happens after they walk through the school doors.

The district is using security wands and portable metal detectors to randomly check students coming into high schools, according to Jonesboro High School principal Carl Jackson.

“It’s our best effort to keep guns out of the schools,” Jackson told parents at a PTA meeting Thursday. “When you’re losing a student a weekend, I can’t say I don’t think it’s necessary.”

The district has sent extra police, counselors and social workers to schools. Identification cards have been issued to all students, who must wear them at all times.

And starting next school year, all 50,000 students in Clayton will be required to wear uniform dress.

There is little else school staff can do, Thompson says.

None of the shootings have occurred on school property, but threats of violence have seeped onto Clayton’s campuses and athletic fields.

On Halloween, the school district rescheduled a Riverdale High football game for daylight hours after rival East Coweta High School threatened not to play because of safety concerns.

“We found on the Internet that gangs had already planned a shootout at that very game,” Thompson said. “Coweta wanted to cancel the game. I told them this is our game and we’re going to play in Clayton County. I’m not going to let gangs dictate football.”

Thompson said nine out of 10 Clayton students have had someone approach them about a gang.

At least one of the four latest homicides was gang-related, Clayton County police Chief Jeffrey Turner said. Chatter on the MySpace pages of some of the deceased students references “Murk Mob” and suggests gang retaliation for the Oct. 25 death of Riverdale student Dana Varner, 16.

• Investigators believe a gang feud may have led to Varner’s death. He was standing with friends in front of a Riverdale home when a car drove by and an occupant opened fire with an AK-47. A junior, Varner had just transferred to Riverdale High from Mundy’s Mill. Jerome David Burgess and Andre Rashad Weems, both 19, have since been charged with murder.

• Police are also investigating possible gang ties in the shooting death of Riverdale High senior and baseball shortstop Joshua Richards, 17. Richards was with friends at a south Atlanta club on Nov. 9 when they got into an argument with another group of young men. Gunfire erupted as Richards climbed into a Jeep. Jarquavius Tisinger, 19, of Atlanta has been charged with murder.

• Hours after Richards’ death, 17-year-old Blanca Badillo of Riverdale was killed. She was a passenger in a car on I-85 near Buford Highway in Atlanta when police say a car pulled alongside that vehicle and opened fire. An 18-year-old traveling with Badillo was also shot and killed. No arrests have been made. Badillo, who had attended Jonesboro High School, was a junior at Clayton’s open campus, which lets students go to school part time.

• On Nov. 4, Ross — Mahone’s sister — was sitting in a car in Riverdale when police say LaShawn Minor, 34, approached and opened fire. A man in the car with Ross returned fire, killing Minor. Ross, a sophomore at Mundy’s Mill High, was pronounced dead at Southern Regional Health System. Police think Minor was trying to rob Ross and her friends.

School board member Lindsey McDaniel was home watching election results on Nov. 4 when his daughter came in and said her friend Rikia had been shot. McDaniel drove three blocks and saw detectives surrounding a bullet-riddled car.

“It’s so close to home,” McDaniel said. “I kept thinking, this is really ridiculous.”

McDaniel remembers Ross sitting on the sidelines when he coached her brother, Mahone, in basketball. McDaniel and his stepson run the Giving Our Adolescent Skills program, which pairs sports with life-skill classes.

“We bring them in through basketball and then teach them interview skills and how to respect people,” McDaniel said. “For Ricardo, it worked. But we came to the realization we can’t save all of them.”

One of the 19-year-olds arrested in Varner’s shooting was in McDaniel’s program.

Effort born of tragedy

When she heard of Ross’ death, Patricia Holden, 61, immediately thought of her granddaughter Krystal Williams. Krystal, 14, was at a “Sweet 16” party in 2005 when she was shot and killed. The honor student was a freshman at Forest Park High School.

“Every time I hear of a child who lost life over something that could have been prevented, it breaks my heart. To take a gun and take somebody’s life like what happened to Krystal is nonsense,” Holden said. “Are the boys who are carrying the guns really realizing the impact?”

Holden and her family run the Krystal Williams Foundation, which offers students activities and scholarships.

“We feel if we can get them out of the normal, everyday baggy-pants setting, the gang settings, and bring them in, they might make better choices when in social settings,” Holden said.

Fear cancels social life

The Riverdale students’ deaths prompted 17-year-old Rashauni Mac to alter her social life. The Riverdale High senior said she no longer goes to parties or out with her friends.

“It makes me scared to go anywhere. I think I’ll be staying in the house a long time,” Mac said. “I was close friends with Josh Richards, and I just couldn’t believe it.”

Students used to linger in the parking lot at Riverdale High for hours after school. Now they quietly say good-bye to friends and rush home or to sports practice.

“Some kids are sad, and there are more cops,” said senior Hakeem Smith, a member of Riverdale’s football team.

Riverdale junior Lavelle Westbrooks said he tries to focus on football and his grades. He says he’s never been involved with gangs, but knows which neighborhoods to avoid.

“I just try to stay straight,” said Westbrooks, 16. “Lately, we’ve been deserving the bad rep. You got to know the places to go. I mean, the Coweta coach didn’t even want to come here. It just fueled the fire.”

Police now search students at Clayton sports events. Thompson plans to have officers conduct background checks on anyone who comes to pick up a student. Anyone with an outstanding warrant will be taken to jail.

“We were told there are 18,000 people in Clayton with warrants that have not been [served],” Thompson said.

County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell said he will assemble a task force of judges, district attorneys, police chiefs, legislators and school leaders to look at the youth violence.

Although community leaders and elected officials are part of the problem, Thompson pointed a finger at parents. “We need to start at home. I still don’t know why [kids] are out at 2 a.m. in the morning,” he said.

Beverly Travis, a Clayton substitute teacher, said some parents don’t seem to care or have time to discipline their children. Many parents had children when they were teenagers themselves and never learned what it takes to raise a child, she said.

She said she has seen students spit on floors, curse and threaten school staff.

“When I go to Riverdale High School, when I go to Jonesboro High School, they are the most disrespectful students,” Travis said. “It can’t continue like this. It’s dangerous. Teachers are afraid. These are not lovely children. We’re talking about thugs.”

Mahone cringes when he hears what’s happened to his neighborhood. Clayton was quiet until 2005, he said. That’s when Krystal Williams and suspected gang member Larry Bishop, 18, were killed. That’s when 1,044 students stayed home from school one day, afraid of gang retaliation.

“The end of my 11th grade year, it got kind of crazy,” said Mahone. “By my senior year, everybody got into Southside Mafia and Latin Kings. Larry got shot and I just tried to stay neutral.”

Mahone, a physical education major who plays defensive back on his football team at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, will transfer to the University of Georgia in January to play football and be closer to his family. He hopes to return to Mundy’s Mill High to tell students about the lessons he’s learned.

“I would tell them gangs are only temporary,” Mahone said. “I would tell them it’s just not worth it.”