view story to see video By Maureen Boyle, Enterprise staff writer
Ramona Jones saw the police cruiser, the ambulance, the EMTs near the gasoline station on Route 28 in Randolph, and the memories of her son's killing in Brockton five years ago flooded back.
“There goes another child that is going to be buried,” Jones recalled thinking. “I already knew, when I saw it, what happened.”
Jones' 16-year-old son, Anthony Weeks, was shot to death on July 5, 2002, in the yard next to her Belmont Street home in Brockton. His killer was 17 at the time.
She hoped at the time her son would be the last young teen to be gunned down in the area. She knew she was wrong when she drove by the homicide scene in Randolph.
“I don't think it is ever going to stop,” she said. “It is going to keep on until all of our children are dead.”
Police and prosecutors are seeing a growing number of younger teens involved in shootings and killings, with many tied to street rivalries or gangs.
The reason, in an odd twist, may be part of the success that authorities are having in putting older, hard-core, violent criminals behind bars for long stretches.
“Younger kids are stepping up and filling up that void,” said Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz. “I don't want to say 'leadership,' but they are all trying to make a name for themselves.”
And these days, a personal slight can lead to shots fired — or murder.
“The respect culture that the older offenders adhere to is being picked up in a really debased and impulsive way by a small number of very young men — or boys. They're not even men,” said David Kennedy, director of the Center of Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
They should all be pistol whipped and have their teeth knocked out !!!!!!!!
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