Gang Violence : Kin Search for Lesson in Boy’s Death

There was nothing to indicate that the life of Kimani Stamps, 15, would be consumed in the wave of gang shootings that is sweeping Los Angeles.

Kimani was a gifted 10th-grade student at Gardena High School. He attended enrichment classes as a member of Young Black Scholars, an organization for college-bound students. And he helped bring Christmas gifts to senior citizens’ centers as a member of Top Teens of America, a service organization.

Fern and Virgil Stamps, his parents, live in a middle-class section of Carson where graffiti is not common, lawns are manicured and the two-story homes sell for $125,000 and up. He is an accountant, she is an office manager.

They Are Not Immune

Despite this, gang violence has surfaced as a serious problem in their community, they say. Last summer they took Kimani and his twin brother, Kwame, also an honor student, out of Banning High School after a gang member robbed them at gunpoint in the school yard.

The violence struck again last Saturday, but with more devastating force. A youth, believed to be a gang member, approached the boys as they stood in front of a friend’s house, shot Kimani in the back of the head and walked away, police said. Kimani died several hours later.

His mother is doing more than mourning.

“God doesn’t make mistakes,” said Fern Stamps. “There has to be some reason why my son was taken. I would go crazy if I didn’t do anything about it.”

“We are not going to let this ugliness tear down our community. He was a loving person, a good person, better than most. No way I am going to let some punk just blow him away like he didn’t exist. Like he didn’t stand for something.”

Search for a Message

The Stamps said they hope their son’s death will serves as another message that the cycle of gang violence should come to an end. Last year, 387 people in Los Angeles County died in gang violence, according to police.

In the Stamps’ neighborhood, the fight is between two rival black street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods. “People have lost their lives because they failed to wear the right gang colors,” says Dirk Edmundson, who is investigating the shooting. The Bloods wear red colors and the Crips wear blue. By all indications, Kimani was not a gang member, Edmundson said.

The shooting occurred shortly after 2:30 a.m. Kimani and Kwame were spending the night with a friend several blocks from their home. The three were putting the garbage out when they noticed a girl who was coming home from the party they had been at earlier.

After talking to the girl, the boys noticed a stranger approaching, someone dressed in a trench coat wearing a red scarf around his face, Kwame told police.

“The guy said ‘What’s up Blood?’ and then pulled out a gun, a white gun with a silver handle,” the boy recalled in an interview. “When the guy pulled out the gun we all ran. Then I heard the shot, I turned around and saw my brother fall.”

‘For No Reason’

“It was messed up, messed up,” he said. “The boy just chased us and shot my brother for no reason, for no reason.”

Doctors at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center kept Kimani alive until Kwame, his older brother Kenyatta, 24, and other members of the family arrived. “The doctors said he could not feel the deepest of pain, and they said that the brain damage was so massive that he would probably be a vegetable if he survived,” his mother said.

He died Saturday evening shortly after they turned off the life-support machines.

For the family, grief soon turned to anger.

“We decided that the only way we could make some sense out of this was to try to raise the awareness of the community about the problem of gang violence,” said Virgil Stamps.

Community Meeting

The family held a special community meeting Thursday evening for friends of Kimani and other children. A wake was held Friday night where members of the Top Teens of America spoke on the evils of gang violence. Funeral services were held Saturday.

More than 300 teen-agers and parents showed up at the Thursday meeting.

“We could have joined a gang but that is not our way,” said Victor Betton, 16. “Still, we have to live here. There are Bloods and Crips. We live in a Crip area. Even though we don’t belong to a gang, the Bloods try to sweat us because we live here.” Betton said that he has several friends who have been injured at the hands of gang members.

Fern Stamps said she wanted to give the group a taste of reality by allowing them to see photographs of Kimani as he lay dying in his hospital bed.

“I wanted the kids to see that reality is not what they see on TV,” she said. “Part of the problem with gangs is that these kids have been raised on a diet of violence. They get desensitized to death on TV.

“I wanted the kids who knew him to see him after the bullet had done its damage, to see that it is not ketchup, it is not make believe. Their friend, my son, won’t get up any more.”

Goal of Programs

Stamps said she wants to see more meetings held between parents and their children to try to defuse some of the frustrations that often result in gang violence.

The one who has had the most difficulty expressing his feelings about the death of Kimani is Kwame.

“He was his teammate,” Virgil Stamps said. “If Kwame needed someone to play with it was always Kimani. If he wanted to play video games, or basketball, or baseball, it was Kimani. They have never been separated. And now Kwame has lost his best friend.” The father said the boy will be entering therapy to help deal with the tragedy.

Linda Ferguson, the director of the Young Black Scholars program, said that the two boys showed tremendous potential. “What was unique is that both parents would also attend the workshops. Usually you see one parent going but their family was so close they did things together,” she said.

Virginia Keller, a mentor English teacher at Gardena High School, who taught Kimani and Kwame, said that she was surprised by the reaction of the students in the class to the news of Kimani’s death. “It did not shock them like you would think,” she said.

One student defined the ongoing war between the Crips and the Bloods, those wearing blue and those wearing red, as creating a new problem of the color line.

“We are being made the innocent victims of assassination over two colors--red and blue,” said Tina Grey.