Vol. 106, Iss. 7 | Tuesday, October 4, 2016
The Flat Hat
The Weekly Student Newspaper
of The College of William and Mary
Flathatnews.com | Follow us:
WILLIAMSBURG
SANE nurse arrives in Williamsburg Move follows multiyear student push SARAH SMITH FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
COURTESY PHOTO / GENERAL XO
Dominique Wallace, one of those charged in the Aug. 27 shooting at The Crust for gang related crimes, is pictured in white. Faces of those who could not be identified were blurred.
Crust shooting tied to local gangs Previously undisclosed gangs escalate feud near campus TUCKER HIGGINS // FLAT HAT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
T
HE SHOTS SEEMED TO COME FROM NOWHERE. Witnesses heard five of them, one after the other. Some were fired above the heads of those in the crowd. A few did damage to student housing. One struck a security guard in the back. Three days later, the security guard, who goes by “Lord,” wrote on his Facebook page that he knew he had been shot when he felt the heat and the pain running up his back. He prayed not to be paralyzed or to die. And then, he wrote, he was no longer afraid. A local repairman cleared away the damage to Tribe Square two days after the shooting, but Lord, who was still under special protection in the hospital, would have to keep the bullet lodged in his body for the rest of his life. To students, the shooting seemed random. In four years, there had been only five shootings reported to the Williamsburg police. According to Williamsburg Police Department Spokesperson Greg Riley, there had never been a shooting like this: a weekend night, an establishment frequented by students, bullets hitting campus. In an interview the day after the shooting, Riley said the shooting involved two groups who had gotten into an altercation. William and Mary Police Chief Deborah Cheesebro published an opinions article in The Flat Hat a few days later in which she said the shooting was — Dawn Taylor, whose son an “isolated incident involving was killed in an alleged gang individuals in a dispute.” An investigation by The Flat incident this summer. Hat found that the shooting at The Crust was neither an isolated incident nor a random act of violence. In fact, it involved two local gangs well known to the Williamsburg Police Department and likely also known to the WMPD, which receives gang intelligence from the WPD. The shooting at The Crust fits into a pattern of escalating violence between two gangs, both with roots in Williamsburg, which are known to commit crimes such as shootings, witness intimidation, drug trafficking and homicide. The gangs, which refer to themselves as 143 and Centerville after the neighborhoods they are based in, have been feuding for years. As summer ended, tensions were especially high because of the July shooting of 18-year old Kameron Stanley, a York County resident who had friends in 143. According to his mother, Dawn Taylor, Stanley worked both in dining services at the College of William and Mary as an employee for Sodexo and also at the Triangle. Sodexo Resident District Manager Jeffrey McClure did not respond to a request for confirmation emailed Sept. 23 or a voice mail left on his cell phone Sept. 30. Sodexo Human Resources Manager Keith Carr did not respond to an email sent Oct. 2. The Triangle could not be reached for comment Oct. 3. To conduct its investigation, The Flat Hat collected dozens of public records, interviewed sources with ties to local gangs as well as multiple individuals present at The Crust the night of the incident, reviewed footage of the event taken hours before the shooting, and reached out to police departments in six nearby jurisdictions. The Flat Hat also reviewed social media postings made by
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“I want people to know that gang violence is real. A lot of people in our community think it does not exist.”
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members of both gangs and spoke to an independent expert in campus security. The Flat Hat has decided to use the names of both gangs, which appear for the first time in print in this article. This article also appears to be the first to identify the Colonial Area Gang Intelligence Network, or CAGIN, an informal organization directed by a member of the WPD that comprises 20 agencies, including the WMPD. The organization, which has expanded since its founding in 2007, is dedicated to facilitating communication between police departments and correctional facilities about gangrelated activity in the colonial area. Aug. 29, two days after the shooting, the WPD issued a press release naming John Johnson as a suspect. Another press release was issued two weeks later, indicating that Johnson had turned himself in. Neither press release noted that the police department suspected the shooting was gang-related. While the WPD would later say that they had no knowledge of Johnson’s gang ties at the time of the incident, the shooting at The Crust was not Johnson’s first encounter with the police. Two years before, Johnson was arrested for allegedly shooting a man with a 9 mm pistol on the 100 block of Merrimac Trail. After that shooting, court documents available in the WIlliamsburg James City County Courthouse show Johnson admitted to the crime. He was never convicted: News reports in the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily show that an uncooperative witness led to the failure of the prosecution. A source with knowledge of the incident, who asked not to be named in order to avoid retribution, said that the victim in the crime was threatened with violence See GANGS page 3
JOHN “MULLAH” JOHNSON Alleged Crust shooter — Johnson, 22, has been living in Williamsburg for five years. —In press releases, the Williamsburg Police Department described him as a Newport News resident. — In this photo posted to his Facebook page, Johnson, an alleged member of the gang 143, is making a hand sign associated with the group. — Court documents show the WPD had extensive knowledge of Johnson’s gang ties before he was named as as a suspect. They did not mention them in initial releases.
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The ups and downs of freshman housing
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Partly sunny, High 79, Low 64
During last week’s Student Assembly senate meeting, SA Vice President Hannah McKiernan ’17 announced that the Riverside Regional Hospital in Williamsburg now has a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These nurses are certified to administer forensic examinations and give special services to survivors of sexual assault. This announcement follows a push by student groups like Health Outreach Peer Educators, 16(IX)3 and Haven volunteers for increased resources for sexual assault survivors. Additionally, SA representatives to the Board of Visitors J.C. LaRiviere ’17 and Rachel Smith ’17 presented the priorities of students in regards to sexual assault to the BOV last week. According to SA Secretary for Public Affairs Jakob Stalnaker ’16 J.D. ’19, this change came from the work of SA in conjunction with City of Williamsburg Mayor Paul Freiling ’83 and other City officials. Stalnaker, McKiernan and SA President Eboni Brown ’17 worked with these officials and administrators at the College of William and Mary. “I have several friends who have daughters away at college,” Freiling said in a written response. “My older daughter will go to college next year. A parent’s worst fear is that call that might come in the middle of the night. Unthinkable is the prospect that help might not readily be available.” As of Sept. 27, City Manager Marvin Collins said that there will now be SANE forensic services provided constantly at the Williamsburg hospital. Additionally, Fire Chief Pat Dent established protocols to transport patients in need of forensic nursing services to Riverside. Prior to this announcement, students seeking Physical Evidence Recovery Kits or the services of a SANE nurse had the option of traveling directly to the Newport News location of the Riverside Hospital or to receive services from Riverside Hospital mobile units of SANE nurses based in Newport News. “After we talked to Mayor Freiling he wanted some information, some numbers about this issue,” Brown said. “I’m really happy with the product of having a SANE nurse no longer as a mobile unit but as a fulltime nurse when students need them. I think it was a collaboration with not only the administration, or with the City of Williamsburg, but with groups on campus that a lot of people have wanted and a lot of people have asked for.” While it is not clear whether this decision required the allocation of funding, Brown and McKiernan believe that this decision was made without funding, as the nurse employed at the Williamsburg location of Riverside comes from the Newport News branch. “A lot of times student groups get discouraged because we want to act so quickly because we see such urgency, but administration and bureaucracy doesn’t always move as quickly as we want them to,” McKiernan said. “It is something that is important on campus and to the City as a whole.”
Rachel Wilmans ‘20 discusses the problems that plague the Green and Gold Village and why they just might not be as bad as they seem. page 5
Musical Philanthropy
Delta Omicron hosts their first annual Fall Fest benefiting Music for All. page 8