As families nearby cleaned up wrapping paper and put the finishing touches on holiday meals, Jammie Ingram stood in the middle of 15th Street in Little Rock trying to stop the tears welling up in her eyes.
The 30-year-old stared at the spot half a block away where her little brother, Verico Ingram, 26, was found shot to death early Monday inside his still-running car.
“It had to have been a setup,” she said. “He just moved away from living with me. When he was with me, he did right. This is the first time anyone in our family has been murdered, and it just … I miss him. I miss my little big brother.”
Ingram, along with her brother’s girlfriend Starmeka Wright, joined a half-dozen preachers from area churches Christmas morning. They stood in a circle in the front yard of an abandoned house on 15th Street to pray that the violence and shootings in the neighborhood will stop.
“These young men, they don’t understand that when you take someone’s life, you don’t just take everything from them, or take them from their family, their children. They’re taking away everything that person could have been in their life, everything they would have done,” said the Rev. Marcus Wiggins, associate pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church. “That’s the ultimate price, and it’s just too steep. This dope, these women, none of it’s worth someone dying.”
Wiggins was lying in bed Tuesday night when he learned that the second shooting death in as many days had happened just a few blocks from where he grew up.
“I knew, I felt moved. I knew I had to call all of the reverends and preachers together,” Wiggins said, shaking his head. “Enough is enough.”
On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after 3:30 p.m., Austin Burks, 26, was found lying in the 1500 block of Adams Street near a bullet-pocked car.
Burks had just been dropped off at his 1505 Adams St. home by his girlfriend when he was shot at least once in the head and fell in the street.
He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at UAMS Medical Center.
Little Rock police had not made an arrest in either homicide as of late Christmas Day.
Calls to detectives and to department spokesman Lt. Sidney Allen seeking further comment were not returned Wednesday.
Police would not say whether they suspect that the two homicides are connected.
Ward 2 City Director Ken Richardson, who works with New Futures for Youth - an organization that helps determine best practices and train staff members for youth intervention programs - said volunteers who are doing outreach work in the community to stem some of the violence are treating the homicides as if they are connected not just to each other but to other instances over the past few months.
“This stems from a couple of conflicts that happened over the last three months that haven’t been resolved,” Richardson said. “These last few shootings this week emanated from shootings over the last three months. It’s all in the same area.”
Richardson said he and other volunteers have conducted street-based interventions after every shooting, trying to calm the negative side effects and the desire to retaliate.
“We’ve done as many street-based interventions lately as we were doing in the early ’90s,” he said, referring to the peak of street violence in Little Rock.
Richardson said he hopes more people will pay attention to the young men falling victim to the new wave of violence.
“I think that we set a disturbing precedent when we treat these murders not as an aberration but as business as usual,” he said. “It sends a disturbing message that our young people don’t matter.”
The pastors gathered Wednesday agreed, but said they need help.
“We want these men to come to their pastors, to come to us and talk about what’s going on when they feel like they have to lash out, when they feel like they don’t have a choice. They do,” Wiggins said. “What we need is help from the city and from community groups. We need these young folks to see that things are happening in their community and that they have positive outlets.”
Police said witnesses saw a maroon car with a cracked windshield pull up to the Adams Street address where Burks was found Tuesday, just before the shots were fired. The witnesses did not know how many people were in the car but said the driver was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head.
Police said this week that a witness saw two black teenage boys dressed in dark clothing, carrying a shotgun, run from the scene where Verico Ingram was found early Monday.
Meanwhile, Jammie Ingram said Wednesday that finding the people responsible for her brother’s death will help, but it won’t fill the void left by his absence.
“It’s Christmas, and he’s not here. He was mine. We were in foster care together, and the moment I could, I took custody of him when he was 14, and I raised him. He was with me for 10 years,” she said. “He just left me a few months ago, and now he just, he’s not coming back.” Information for this article was contributed by Spencer Willems of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/26/2013