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Posted by: kwflatbed

Friday, June 6, 2008

By Amanda Milkovits

Journal Staff Writer

Relatives and friends gather near 112 Warrington St., Providence, where Michael Fortes was found dead yesterday.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman




PROVIDENCE — Michael Fortes walked out of his family’s house in Elmwood around 1:30 in the morning yesterday. About a half-hour later, the 19-year-old was found slumped on the handicapped ramp against the back door, fatally shot, said detective Maj. Stephen Campbell.
The police are trying to determine who did it, and why.
Fortes, whose family nickname was “Mikey-Mike,” was the fifth homicide victim in the city this year.
The tall, thin young man had been part of an extended and close-knit family. But his short life had also been marked by trouble.
He was stabbed in a fight at an apartment a few blocks from his family’s home back in December and spent two weeks hospitalized. Three months later, he was arrested when allegedly caught with marijuana a block from his house, according to a police report.
And then, just three days before he died, Fortes was arrested again, after someone saw him wielding a knife and fighting with his mother and older sister at their house, according to a police report.
Fortes ran when he saw the police and hid in his bedroom, the report said. After Fortes surrendered, the police found a large steak knife under his bed, according to the report.
Although his mother denied being threatened with a knife, Fortes was arrested on a warrant for failing to go to District Court for the charge of drug possession from March.
Fortes had been known to the Providence police and peripherally to the street workers who work within the Institute for the Study & Practice of Non-Violence. Some of his relatives said Fortes had been involved with Tides Family Services, in Providence, which has an alternative education program and day school for at-risk students. They were unsure whether he had graduated from school. Tides did not return calls for comment.
Fortes was unemployed and living in his late grandmother’s house at 112 Warrington St., along with his mother, Denise, his older sister, Michelle, and several of his friends. Some of his relatives said he’d talked about getting out of Providence and starting over somewhere else.
Yesterday, Fortes went out early in the morning. About a half-hour after he left, one of the friends living in the house opened the back door and found Fortes lying motionless at the top of the wooden handicapped ramp, Campbell said.
The friend told the police that he wasn’t sure at first what was wrong with Fortes and he called for the others in the house to help move him, Campbell said. When they turned Fortes, they found he was bleeding and they called for help, Campbell said.
Fortes was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. The medical examiner had completed the autopsy yesterday, Campbell said, and detectives were working to determine the circumstances of the shooting.
Only a week ago, the many members of the family had come together from all over the country to bury the matriarch, Fortes’ great-grandmother. They were returning yesterday, this time to mourn Fortes.
Relatives and friends gathered outside and inside the light blue house on Warrington Street. Some cleaned the property or talked together, while others headed inside to comfort Fortes’ mother. His father was at his home on Oxford Street and declined to comment, saying it was too soon to talk about his son.
Teny Gross, the executive director of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Non-Violence, said he stayed with Fortes’ family for a while after the killing.
“If only the young people who do this [shooting] could see what the mothers go through,” Gross said. “That’s what was going through my head all night.”

http://www.projo.com/news/content/pr...2e7a2.html?npc

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