Since this is all just a theory on both our parts with regards to what actually happen, we could include that the 14 year old could have been handling the gun to familiarize its workings, when it went off. That said, if your scenario is correct MrWolf, then this kid has no future and will live in fear unless he joins a gang to protect himself ? Then society has let him down.
If the kid is afraid to explain how he got his injury, then crime and the fear associated with it, is much worse then the recent news release crap from Comey. On the other hand didn?t we have ?kids? of a similar age beat up some old guys recently?
JC is and will always be a breeding ground for juvenile or adult crime and gangs that speaks loud and clear about our social infrastructure on law enforcement, education, health, family values and government?s attitude to resolving this social cancer.
It starts from the top and JC has some real pieces of siht governing us, which reflects all the way to the care and services we provide for our new born to retirement.
I think some people forget that only a few blocks away from the ?modern? waterfront, kids and families are poor, uneducated and these same 14 year olds are having babies and committing violent crimes.

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I don't know if there is much humor in someone almost being murdered. No less a, kid. No less in the afternoon, when most youngsters are coming back from school. Hopefully, FAB, you won't one day have the misfortune of getting YOUR hand caught in the "cookie" jar.

There are many on this board who automatically jump to conclusions when they hear about a victim being uncooperative. They'll start blurting out "Baby Gangsta" or some other inane b*llsh*t, and assume the kid probably had it coming. The reality is that the route of being "cooperative" is rife with danger for anyone in these neighborhoods, and is a very, very hazardous way to go. These kids know the police can't and won't protect them (and their family), and now, the other criminal a-holes on the street know they've spoken to the police (making them a threat). The kid in this situation clearly knows the shooter, and has made a decision to not share it with the police for his own self preservation. Whether this evasiveness is rooted in fear, or the need to facilitate retribution, the silence on the part of the victim is telling.

These days, it really doesn't take much in the streets for one of these kids/adults to start shooting. It could literally be for ANY provocation (perceived or not), as the regard for human life in this day has dropped to Baghdad levels. Caught in the middle of this national disgrace are countless young people. I mean, make the simple mistake of wearing a red polo, on the wrong block, and it could mean your life. For a f***ing shirt! These kids live with this sh*t on a daily basis ... and all some people can do is be smug.

It is incredible to hear about some of the things these kids have to deal with today, in this, the most powerful country in the world. See the following article about the trials the basketball coach in nearby Irvington has had to endure. One more thing, if this shooting can happen to a kid in Jersey City at 4:30PM, it could happen to any member of this site or their kids.


HOOPS AS A HAVEN

Irvington High coach struggles to create a safe, positive environment despite the shooting deaths of two of his players

Sunday, June 03, 2007

BY MATTHEW FUTTERMAN

Star-Ledger Staff

The first time one of his players got shot, Irvington High School basketball coach Eugene Robinson rushed to the scene and cried over the body as it lay beneath a white sheet.

The murder occurred less than three years ago. The memories remain raw.

With a stiff jaw, Robinson led his team through the grieving over the inexplicable death of Keith McCarey, a 285-pound big man teammates called a "mama's boy" because his mother was so protective of him. Players cried in Robinson's office for hours and talked about their dead friend until they ran out of words.

When it happened again this past Mother's Day morning, Robinson knew too well the routine that would follow. This time it was 19-year-old Alex Flowers, a graduate from the previous year who had been the team jokester.

"I keep trying to tell these kids that this is not normal," Robinson said last week as he watched some of his current and former players battle in a half-court four-on-four.

"But the streets have changed with the gang situation. It used to be a fight and then everyone would forget about it. Now you look at someone the wrong way or wear the wrong color and the next thing you know, you have a gun in your face."

Robinson qualifies as an Irvington legend. He's the point guard who led the team in one of New Jersey's most downtrodden cities to a state championship in 1993. Now, he's fighting the same battle that cops, educators and parents have undertaken in poor cities everywhere. And yet, no matter how hard he and others try to insulate their kids, the streets keep turning them into collateral damage.

The murders of McCarey and Flowers remain unsolved. There are no suspects, and police said there is no evidence linking either victim to gang activity. They are dying proof of the old clich? -- they may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And now Robinson's players are scared.

Almusal Carter, a 16-year-old sophomore forward, saw Flowers as a role model, a defensive standout who always guarded the other team's best player. He wears the same floppy braids Flowers did. Three weeks after Flowers' death, Carter considers his school and his house the only safe places in town.

"Even if you're not doing anything, you still could get killed," Carter said in the gym, his braids dripping with sweat.


SAD SITUATION

Robinson, 32, has the sad, baggy eyes and soft voice of someone with way more on his plate than he expected.

He grew up around the corner from the spot where Alex Flowers died and returned to his old school as a teacher in 2000 to show the local kids they could end up somewhere other than the streets. He took over the basketball program two years later, and this is where he wants to stay.

"I've been in their shoes," said Robinson, who played basketball for Felician College and with another six inches would be a dead ringer for former NBA point guard Mark Jackson. "I talk to them more about gang stuff than I do about basketball."

Irvington High School, a heavy gray and brown brick building on Clinton Avenue, has a worn, urban school look. The patchy grass on the football field is overgrown. Half the fluorescent bulbs in the weight room have blown. In hallways and offices, spackled walls wait for a repainting job that may or may not occur.

The school lags behind state averages in every category. SAT scores are 50 percent lower. In 2002, the freshman class numbered 527 students. Three years later, that same class, the school's seniors, had 306 members.

Within blocks of the school, it's easy to spot signs of a city where 30 percent of the households earn less than $25,000, according to recent census figures. People with little to do hang on the sidewalks outside corner groceries. Some are panhandling; some are just there.

"It's not just an Irvington problem; it's society in itself" Irvington Police Director Michael Damiano said. "We're seeing more and more violence with the young people."

This is the life Robinson wants his players to avoid.

No one, no matter how troubled, is too much of a burden for him. School principal Neely Hackett often gives Robinson names of students with mounting problems at home and in the classroom so he can make an extra effort to get them involved with an extracurricular activity.

"He's so much more than a basketball coach," Hackett said. "Every one of his players has his cell phone number. They call him about everything all the time. His connection with them does not end with the season."


GYM AS A SANCTUARY

The basketball team has become one of Irvington's brightest lights, finishing in The Star-Ledger Top 20 four of the past five years. Last season, they finished 20-8, including an early season upset win over Linden, one of the top teams in the New York metro area.

The program now serves as both a sports team and a tight-knit club. Its base is the airy school gym, where light streams in through the high windows, the floor badly needs a polish and the Blue Knights logo at center court is a faded shade of dark gray.

Opponents dread playing at Irvington because the court is a full 94 feet, as opposed to other high school gyms with shorter courts. Students pack the gym for games, and Robinson implores his team and the fans to make life as uncomfortable as possible for opponents -- from raucous noise, to the intense, physical style of play he pushes. His is not a finesse team. They lift weights all summer so they can bang with anyone.

Nearly every day, in season or out, current and former players are in the gym playing ball, running on the track outside or lifting weights. They usually wear only white and black, so no one confuses them for gang members, who often identify themselves with bright red or blue shirts and do-rags.

The age differences don't matter. LaMarr Williams, who graduated last year, stops in the middle of a pickup game to show Carter a move. Robinson, careful not to break state rules that prohibit coaching in the off-season, sits quietly on a bench nearby watching for hours on end.

They kids play together in summer leagues and attend camps at local colleges. They go to Robinson's house in Maplewood and mess around with his two sons, ages 2 and 6.

"I just want to keep them busy," he said. "I look around and I see what else they could be doing."


NO ESCAPING VIOLENCE

By all accounts, Keith McCarey was following Robinson's instructions the evening of July 13, 2004, when he walked around the corner to buy juice. McCarey and his mom lived in a section of Irvington west of the Garden State Parkway, on quiet, tree-lined Nesbit Terrace.

McCarey, who was heading into his senior year, was a 17-year-old, 6-5 center being recruited to play football at North Carolina State. He was his mother's only child, and she was proud of overprotecting him, keeping track of his whereabouts nearly every minute. He suffered from a rare growth disorder that caused seizures and discolored "caf? au lait" spots on his body. But the disease didn't get in the way of his sports.

"He wasn't the greatest player, but that was his life," said Kathy McCarey, Keith's mother, who works in social services for Essex County. "His best friends in the world were his team."

That July night, Keith McCarey called his mother from the store to ask her if juice was all she needed. Minutes later, according to police, a white car approached McCarey, who had run into friends on Lyons Avenue at Lincoln Place. A passenger with a handgun got out, police said. The group scattered, but McCarey couldn't get away. He was shot in the chest and pronounced dead at the scene.

"He was getting to that age where I couldn't keep him in my pocket all the time," Kathy McCarey said. "I did everything I could to protect him, the SAT tutor, a job at the ice cream parlor, the sports, and still someone took his life."

Whaheed Dixon, Keith McCarey's best friend and a forward on the basketball team, said he never thought the violence in his town would claim someone from a team that worked so hard to stay out of trouble. He tattooed Keith's name on his right biceps and rubbed it before every game the following season, when the team went 22-5.

"He was just passing through the area, one thing led to another and now he's no longer with us," said Dixon, who attended Mercer County Community College for a time and is now looking for a job and another school.

Kathy McCarey often looks through a scrapbook of her son's life, and still keeps his baby teeth, too. After his death, she made up dog tag necklaces with his name.

She gave one of them to a buddy from the basketball team named Alex Flowers.


A BRIGHT LIGHT IS PUT OUT

Flowers was a coach's dream, Robinson said.

A lanky, long-armed forward who wore his shorts low, his socks high and never got tired. He also would needle everyone on the team bus.

"I'd tell him to stop, but I didn't really care if he did because as soon as we hit the floor, I knew exactly what I was going to get from him," Robinson said.

The basketball court was a haven for Flowers. He grew up without his father near Nye Avenue in a dangerous neighborhood where dilapidated houses and refuse dominate the landscape, and the destitute drink from paper bags in the middle of the afternoon.

During the eighth grade, Flowers and his best friend and teammate, LaMarr Williams, made one of those corny promises to share their wealth if either made it to the NBA. Williams is now a 6-2, 195-pound guard with beige stretch marks on the dark skin beneath his collarbone from weightlifting.

Last week, between pickup games, Williams recalled a game against Newark's East Side High that symbolized their friendship.

In the final minutes, East Side intercepted an inbounds pass from Williams and was about to take the lead. Flowers stole the ball and drew a foul as he drove toward East Side's basket.

"I told him I'd have his back if he missed the foul shot, and when he did I got the rebound and put it back in," Williams said.

Irvington won by three points.

Last year, Flowers' mother died just before the end of school. Flowers moved in with his aunt and postponed plans to attend a junior college for a year to help care for his two younger sisters.

Around 1 a.m. on May 13, Flowers sat on a friend's porch on Nye Avenue near Maple Street, police said. Two men, one in a hooded sweatshirt, the other in a T-shirt, approached and shot him in his chest and his leg multiple times with semiautomatic weapon, police said. Flowers died instantly.

Robinson said he got the call around 8 a.m., just as he was settling in with his wife and children for Mother's Day. Instead of celebrating, he spent the day grieving with his players as they called, one by one, to see if the news was really true.

This time when he got to the site of the shooting, Flowers' body had been replaced with a pile of flowers and messages from friends.

Williams heard around 11 a.m., as he walked with a bag of his family laundry to the laundromat. He and Flowers planned to spend the summer working out and looking for a junior college to play for next season. Now he hopes there will be a next season for him at a school far away from New Jersey.

"After the death of my best friend, I sure don't want to hang around here anymore," he said.

Robinson isn't giving up on Irvington yet. The murder rate dropped by 25 percent last year to 24 and is on pace to be lower this year. An increase in youth sports and other activities get some of the credit, police officials said.

Still, Robinson said he can't blame Williams for wanting to get away.

"You never get over seeing one of your players lying in a casket like that," he said. "You've just got to find a way to be strong for the kids and move on."



Matthew Futterman can be reached at

mfutterman@starledger.com

sounds like he had his hand in an illegal 'cookie' jar and was taught a lesson

Hearing stuff like this only makes me worry more about walking around with my son. How and why the HeLL do these kids get access to guns anyway? Some world.

Teen shot in hand

Saturday, June 09, 2007

A 14-year-old boy told Jersey City police that a masked teen snuck up behind him on Clerk Street on Thursday and blasted him in the hand with a revolver at close range, police said yesterday.

The boy, who lives on Bidwell Avenue, told cops he was walking down Clerk around 4:30 p.m. when an older teen, disguised in black sweats and matching ski mask, came up behind him, shot him in the palm of his left hand, and ran away, police said.

According to reports, he later told an investigator he was walking on Myrtle Avenue, not Clerk Street. A police spokesman said the victim was "evasive and uncooperative" and would give no further information when questioned about the incident.

The wound on the victim's hand was consistent with one he could have sustained if he had a grip on the gun when it fired, suggesting he may have grabbed the gun as he was attacked, police wrote in the report of the incident.

The bullet went clean through the victim's hand, and he was taken to Jersey City Medical Center for treatment, according to reports.

N. CLARK JUDD