Hank's murder is still unsolved. A teenage suspect was arrested. With the help of police documents I calculate that twenty-three fatal shootings have occurred within a thousand feet of the Payne School since 1992. Four of those cases have been closed with an arrest, including the death of Officer White, but three cases were instances in which police officers shot civilians. In such an environment, violence is an open wound.
Visitors are shocked to see neighborhood kids acting out scenes of street violence as they play.
Children six, seven, or eight pretend to shoot one another point-blank in the head. In my neighborhood the method of splattering someone's brains is picked up young. When David Smith and Paul Watkins died, a friend noted that of the after-school youth basketball team she had organized in 1996 at Kentucky Courts, four members and a coach had been killed. Many who knew him were surprised that he had survived so long, because he stood out even among those who were angry and reckless. We predicted his murder.