Irene was a security guard who had found a moral place for herself with the Nation of Islam after the following situation. This interview was conducted on a bus stop, at dawn, under an autumn sky. I felt bad watching her cry, but she wanted to get this “off her chest” and “tell somebody white, who might see it my way.”
Irene
#61-23: day, seconds, eye-witness
“I was going over my sister’s friend’s house in East Baltimore when I ran into my brother, who said he wanted to go with me so he could make a phone call. He knew my sister’s friend, so I didn’t think nothin’ of it.
“When we got inside they started to argue over some drug-related dispute, and instead of making a phone call my brother goes down stairs. My sister’s friend stooped down to work on a television cable as my brother came back up from the basement with a bat, came up behind him, and hit him in the right side of the head. My sister’s friend went down and I intervened—pushing him back. He was so strong—crazed, on some kind of drug—that it was hard to push him back.
“He picked up an ashtray and hit him on the same spot and it swelled up. He then turned and said, ‘You take that jewelry off [of him] or I’m gonna finish him off!’
“I took off the man’s jewelry, gave it to my brother, and made the ambulance call. The ambulance got him to the hospital where he later died.
“I talked to the homicide detective. He said that he knew I was innocent; that it wasn’t my fault, and that it was a hell of a thing for my brother to put me in that position. I testified against him and he got twenty years.
“I had to eventually move away from my family, so I can’t go in my old neighborhood anymore. My parents are with the Lord. Half of my family and my brother’s friends are against me because I testified. The other half of my family and my sister’s friends are against me because I took my brother to the house—but how was I to know his intentions? He even had his girlfriend with him at the time—and don’t you know, it didn’t bother her!”
I have noticed that the most dastardly [the word that comes to mind most fittingly] crimes are done within an in group, and are almost always same race crimes.
