The Next Page: Chronicles of a deadly street rivalry

Sunday, May 20, 2007

In some neighborhoods, loyalty is tested and proven through the barrel of a gun. To claim allegiance means you're willing to kill or die for the cause. And acts of disloyalty to your allies can have deadly consequences.

Justice is meted out in bullets, not verdicts. Few witnesses ever testify in court.

This type of street justice prevails in the feud between residents of St. Clair Village and Beltzhoover. The rift began at the height of the 1980s crack epidemic, but police say the rivalry is not over turf or drugs. No one knows what kicked off the cycle of revenge and retaliation that has become the life-or-death mission of a new generation of young black males who live two miles apart.

Justice is meted out in bullets, not verdicts. Few witnesses ever testify in court.

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This story focuses on one small chapter of that ongoing feud -- the events before and after the March 2005 death of Keith Watts Jr., a 16-year-old Carrick High School sophomore.

Some victims in this battle are shot or killed by rivals from the opposing neighborhood. Others are targeted by neighbors for talking to cops about the feud. A pervasive street code teaches that "snitching" has fatal repercussions for informants and their families.

Witnesses know and fear the consequences of coming forward. This is one reason that few violent crimes in this year-long saga have been or will be prosecuted. The Keith Watts case was an exception.

The conflict also reverberates beyond the borders of these south Pittsburgh towns. Watts, who lived in Knoxville but hung out with guys from St. Clair, fought and died for St. Clair. A year later, William Roberson IV, who had no connection to either neighborhood, had the fatal misfortune to be waiting for a bus in Beltzhoover when a St. Clair man was cruising its streets in search of revenge.

On May 4, a jury convicted three Beltzhoover men for the death of Watts. The prosecution built its case around the testimony of Beltzhoover-affiliated informants. Howard Kelley and Shawn Wilmer are facing mandatory life sentences for first-degree murder and conspiracy. Jheri Matthews could get 20 to 40 years for conspiracy to commit murder.

(The accounts of the violent events surrounding Watts' death are based on police investigations, courtroom testimony and interviews, but few of the alleged perpetrators have been charged with or convicted of these crimes.)

Click on the locator numbers below, 1 - 8,
to follow the terrible path of The Feud.

July 26, 2005, 11:30 a.m., Beltzhoover

Word gets out in Beltzhoover that Lamar "Animal" Cochran is "on a mission" to avenge the latest St. Clair shooting victims. The streets clear. But the warnings never reach 19-year-old William Roberson IV, who does not claim ties to either neighborhood, but happens to be waiting for a bus there.
A Port Authority driver sees a man on foot fatally shoot Roberson. The driver identifies Cochran, who is charged with murder.
"Animal" Cochran goes on trial June 11.

July 19 and July 21, 2005, Beltzhoover

CI One is attacked twice in two days for allegedly informing on his friends.
On July 19, CI One is shooting craps with friends outside a convenience store when an armed assailant shielding his face with a shirt charges him on foot. The gun jams. Later CI Three says "Trig" Wilmer was the masked attacker. No injuries or arrests.
The next day, Wilmer pulls into a corner store and asks CI One why he's ratting to the cops. He says he isn't. In fact, he prides himself on "stop snitchin'" philosophy, adhering to street justice. But his buddies are operating on a false rumor that he's flipped on them. It turns out CI Three , a 30-year-old with a lengthy police record, turned Kelley and his crew onto CI One as the "snitch" on the Carrick High homicide to take the heat off the real informant, his friend CI Two.
At 1:23 a.m. on July 21, CI One is shot outside the same convenience store. He's hit in the shoulder and arm; a bullet to his back is a few centimeters short of paralyzing him.
After he is treated at Mercy Hospital, he agrees to talk to police, identifying Wilmer as the shooter. Ballistics tests show that the weapon was the same 9-mm Ruger used in two earlier shootings.
Wilmer is arrested later that day. He faces a jury trial this summer for attempted homicide.

July 9, 2005, 1:39 a.m., Beltzhoover

CI Two is home with two brothers when he hears shots and glass shattering from a front window. He's being targeted for "snitching" by Beltzhoover guys he's known for years. Confidential Informant Three tells the cops "Trig" Wilmer shot up CI Two's house. No one is injured or arrested. Seventeen shots are traced to the same 9-mm Ruger handgun used in the Feb. 9, 2005, attack outside Watts' grandmother's house.

March 16, 2005, 1:45 p.m., Carrick

Parked in his grandmother's purple Geo Tracker a block from Carrick High, Keith Watts is shot dead by assailants with assault rifles.
Watts and friends Alfred Grimmitt and Raymont Dillard are caught on a school surveillance tape leaving via a side exit before the last period starts. Their plan is to head off campus and smoke marijuana blunts.
Watts is fiddling with a broken blunt when a Hyudai Sonata pulls up beside the Geo Tracker. Grimmitt sees a AK-47 assault rifle protruding from the passenger window and hears glass shattering.
Watts dies instantly after getting hit with multiple rounds, including two slugs that blast his brain from his skull. Grimmitt, in the passenger seat, is struck by a bullet fragment that grazes his arm and enters his chest. He doesn't realize he's been hit until he runs inside the school and tells a teacher, "Someone killed Spud." Grimmitt is treated at Mercy. Dilllard (whose father Stephon was randomly hit in the June 24 retaliatory drive-by) escapes injury by crouching in the back of Watts' car during the attack.
CI Two tells police that Kelley, Wilmer and Matthews were waiting outside the school in another "rock buggy" that Kelley secured from "PJ" Foley, this time for $60 of crack. The shooters have SKS and AK-47 assault rifles, which police say are bought at gun shows by the bundle.

Feb. 9, 2005, 9 p.m., Knoxville

Assailants open fire on "Spud" Watts and Poellnitz as they exit the Academy van outside Wendy Watts' Knoxville home.
It's dark outside. Wendy Watts is sitting in her front room telling her 8-year-old great-niece that it's about time for the boys to be coming home from school. A 24-year-old niece is upstairs. The grandmother hears the van's sliding door van close. Then she hears glass shattering and gunshots.
Amid the chaos, she opens the front door and sees her grandson and Poellnitz covering each other with their bodies at the foot of the stairs. She sees a row of muzzle flashes coming from between houses across the street.
Bullets blow out a window on the van, which has other students on board. Police find bullet holes in Wendy Watts' front window and in two doors. A slug is embedded in a living room wall. No one is injured or arrested.
Confidential Informant Two , a 26-year-old gun supplier who commands a high level of respect in the neighborhood, tells police that Kelley and Matthews had staked out "Spud" for days. The gun supplier says Matthews emptied the entire 15-round magazine of a Ruger pistol in the attack. Matthews' buddies later tease him about his inability to hit a target.
After this shooting, the Academy releases Watts, fearing he might be attacked again along the van's predictable route. Watts' grandmother lends him her car, a purple Geo Tracker, so he'll be safer traveling to and from Carrick High.

June 24, 2004, 10:30 p.m., Knoxville

Fearing for his safety, Keith Watts' grandmother turns him in to juvenile probation officials who transfer him to George Junior Republic in Mercer County.
Wendy Watts , who raised the teen-ager from infancy, hears rumors that her grandson is suspected of shooting Matthews at McKinley Park.
"Spud" Watts has been AWOL from Allegheny Academy, a community program for delinquent youth, which he attends after classes at Carrick High School.
The feud continues between the neighborhoods, but Watts is removed from the mix until he returns Jan. 20, 2005, and resumes at Carrick High School. Friends say the aspiring engineer is hilarious, a guy who keeps the crowd laughing.
After students attend the Academy in the afternoons, a school van drops off Watts and his brother Rayvon Poellnitz at Keith's grandmother's house.

June 24, 2004, 12:57 a.m., St. Clair Village

The night after the drive-by, three friends from Beltzhoover set out to avenge the assault on Matthews.
On June 23, "Duck" Kelley, also a prolific rapper who's known to brag about his street exploits, arranges to "rent a rock buggy" -- slang for exchanging drugs for a borrowed car. (You don't want to do a drive-by in your own car.) Kelley gives Patrick "PJ" Foley $50 of crack for the use of a Nissan Quest minivan.
Later that night Kelley , a friend known as "Scoot" and CI One "ride on" St. Clair village armed and stocked with ammo. With Kelley at the wheel and the van's sliding door open, the trio randomly opens fire on a group of four or five men leaning against a car on Fisher Street in St. Clair Village. Kelley has a .45-caliber semi-automatic, "Scoot" has an AK-47 assault rifle and CI One gets off a couple of shots from a .9 mm semiautomatic. The St. Clair men return fire.
A 39-year-old construction worker named Stephon Dillard suffers a gunshot to the torso and 15-year-old Derrelle Williams gets hit in the leg. Both are taken to Mercy Hospital. Police recover a bullet-riddled Quest minivan. No one is arrested.
CI One takes a bullet to the forearm in the barrage. He says Kelley shot him accidently and he bears no grudge -- as yet.
CI One takes a jitney to Mercy Hospital where he ends up rooming with and tending to "Pound" Matthews , who is recovering from the neck wound. The informant tells cops he was shot by guys from St. Clair. He leaves Mercy before his release to avoid further questioning.

June 22, 2004, 3:19 p.m., McKinley Park, Beltzhoover

Jheri "Pound" Matthews is playing basketball when a bullet fired from a passing car strikes him in the neck. Medics rush him to Mercy Hospital in critical condition. He nearly dies from blood loss from a ruptured carotid artery.
Matthews and four or five friends, including Howard "Duck" Kelley , tell police they didn't see who was in the car. Other witnesses in the park say the shooter, who discharged at least 18 rounds, was in the passenger seat of a burgundy van.
No one is arrested. Police never locate the van. But word gets out on the street that Keith "Spud" Watts Jr. and his friend "Dewey," were the perpetrators. The drive-by is thought to be retaliation for the June 19 shooting of two St. Clair men near the SVS Club on West Warrington Avenue.
Matthews, an aspiring rapper and expectant father, has been friends for life with Kelley , future co-conspirator Shawn "Trig" Wilmer, and a 21-year-old man who will become Confidential Informant One when he helps police string together the 13-month series of shootings following this event.