January 16, 2019

Murder in my courtyard 6/1/2018

Imagine that you are in the exact middle of a mosh pit surrounded by a thousand people at Bunbury 2018 with Chainsmokers playing in front of you, and then somehow you see that you have a text and multiple missed calls from your neighbor. "There's something happening at your building and police are there now. I heard gun shots and saw someone firing into your courtyard."

Oh, shit.

By the time that I made it out of the sea of people and walked back home, the police and fire fighters had already been on the scene for a while. Another neighbor's cameras has caught a lot of the event on film like an episode of Cops, so we knew most of what had happened - just had no clue why.

My front gate had bullet marks. It turned out that I was "lucky" according to the fire fighters because since it happened outside, they could hose off the blood and bleach the smell; otherwise it would have been mine to clean up. After answering all their questions and waiting for hours for them to complete the investigation, we were allowed back inside and able to go to bed after a traumatic night. Not a lot of sleep.

Unfortunately, this was just the start of the bloodshed that weekend. It was the first of 3 murders in 3 days and a few more that week. The calmest summer yet for gun violence since I had moved here over 5 years ago had just spiked abruptly. Even the news media & 3CDC were on spin control, as they feared it would deter visitors to the neighborhood. It had been a while since anyone questioned OTR's newfound safety, including me, and suddenly it was now on my doorstep, literally.

The next morning I felt like I should do something. To prevent it again - but how, it was so random? To wash it away - it was already bleached, but another round helped clear my mind. As I sprayed, the family of the victim came by to just see where it happened. A police grief counselor came over to talk to them. As I turned to go back inside, the uncle drove his car to the curb in front of the building and stuck a 40oz Colt 45 out of his window. We both watched it empty and he sped away.

I still felt like I needed to do something. As the bodies continued to fall that week, it built on me. I decided to see if I could get a Before I Die art installation from an Art Academy student to help start a community conversation around these deaths. I made another board that said "Life is too short: to be/not to..." and put it in front of my building. The police and a few neighbors held a procession around the blocks and started writing with chalk on the boards to give some inspiration to others on what they could do before they die or in their short lifetime. It didn't seem to spark the conversation we hoped - more just as a target for vandalism and the anger. After a few weeks we took them down. 

It was a little while after that that the memorials started in front of my building. It started with balloons on my front gate that I moved it to a nearby street sign. It quickly escalated to candles, flowers, and more balloons. As the flowers withered, I cleaned them up. As the balloons popped, I cleaned them up. Then they began to be plastic flowers and mylar balloons. After 3 months of playing gravekeeper, I had had enough and needed closure myself. I cleaned them up more frequently and it escalated further to them tagging the sidewalk with graffiti, then even the side of my building. The city power-washed the spray paint, but I had to send that this needed to be taken elsewhere. I posted signs directly memorials to his actual grave site. They took the signs down at first then eventually stopped. Every once in a while they'll be back and taken down promptly. It's been a battle over turf that the victim had only know for approximately a month.

The aftermath was the worst part for all involved. It turned out that the deceased victim had started dating my tenant about a month prior to the murder. That was the connection that brought him to his final spot here. And it started a ripple effect that caused a search of my tenant's apartment where they found a gun that violated her dad(also my tenant & living together)'s parole. Now her dad is in jail for 3 years, she can't make rent (and wasn't even on the lease officially), and I had to be the bad guy to end their MTM lease. They had been my tenants for 4+ years and steered clear of all of the drugs and gun violence in the area for much longer - it only took one mistaken month to sink their ship. It was really sad and hard.

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