Apr 23, 2009 8:10 pm US/Eastern
I-Team: Possible Motive Emerges In Mass Shooting
Witnesses Still Unwilling To Testify
LIBERTY CITY (CBS4) ―
Three months after what has been called the worst mass shooting in Miami's history, homicide detectives are still struggling to find witnesses as well as a motive in the mayhem that killed two people and wounded seven others.
But one theory which has emerged is that the January 23rd Liberty City shooting was in retaliation for a bungled robbery four days earlier, in which the victim, Neo Brown, a 21-year-old rapper who sang about the hard realities of life on the streets, was shot to death just a few blocks away.
According to the woman who was with Brown at the time of his death, Brown had attended the Martin Luther King Day celebrations in Liberty City and was walking with some friends when he stopped to speak to her.
"He was talking to me and this young guy came up behind him and grabbed his chain and said, "Let me get that and don't give me a hard time," recalled the woman, who asked that her name be withheld. "Neo punched him and he pushed me out of the way and that's when he got shot."
Brown died in the street before he could make it to a hospital.
Police suspect the man who robbed and shot Neo Brown was Derrick Gloster.
The woman who was with Brown picked Gloster's picture out of a photo array several weeks ago and the Miami Dade detective on the case told her they had received information from other sources that Gloster was the person responsible for killing Brown, whose real name was Jefferson Phanord.
Miami police are now trying to determine if the mass shooting on January 23 in which Gloster was one of the teens killed was an act of retaliation for the Neo Brown murder.
From the outset of the January 23rd shootings, police were told by witnesses in the area that it appeared Gloster – whose nickname was Termite because he was so small – was the intended target.
"They were after Termite," one woman who lives across the street told CBS4 News the day after the shooting.
Gloster's mother, Tangela Graham, told the CBS4 I-Team that she had heard from "the street" that her son Derrick may have been the intended target. She said she had no idea who Neo Brown was, but that she had heard her son may have been shot because either he or a member of his gang had allegedly been responsible for a robbery and shooting on the night of the Martin Luther King day parade.
Asked if she believed her son was responsible for Brown's death, Graham said: "I'm going to hope not. I wasn't there so I really can't say. He's not a great kid. He's a boy living in the society of Liberty City – that's not a good neighborhood."
Graham said she knew her son was in a gang called ABM, which stands for All Bout Money. She said she confronted Derrick about it a year ago.
"I approached Derrick and asked him, `Do you hurt people? Do you all go and do bad things?' And he told me, `No, momma, it's just a gang and we're into girls. We talk to a lot of girls.' That's what he told me.
She said she heard stories about her son carrying a gun and warned him against it, telling him, "don't pull no guns, don't do nothing bad to nobody because bad comes back on you."
Now she wonders if something bad did indeed come back to her son and all those standing alongside her boy.
"The way I heard the story the boys walked right up on Derrick," Graham said. "If it was meant just for Derrick, they shouldn't have shot all those other people."
The shooting garnered national attention.
"Extremely disappointed to see what occurred last night," Miami Mayor Manny Diaz said during a press conference on the block where the shooting occurred.
"The amount of AK47s that are in this city and this region is just out of control," added Miami Police Chief John Timoney.
For days, politicians and community activists held town hall meetings and candlelight vigils, begging the community for help in ending the violence.
"It is time for everybody in this community to wake up and do something about what is happening in our neighborhood," said Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence Jones, who represents the Liberty City neighborhood.
Even the Rev. Al Sharpton flew in for one event, scolding members of the black community for failing to come forward to help police solve this crime.
"When you shoot a child in Liberty City since November 4, 2008, you may be shooting the next president of the United States," Sharpton said.
Returning to the block three months later, the street is largely quiet. The floating craps game that was being played on the corner at the time of the shooting has moved on. And so have the politicians.
And although there were dozens of people on the street that night, very few have been willing to come forward and cooperate with police. In fact, many of the very victims of this crime – the people who were wounded – are refusing to cooperate.
"If that's how the community is, a lot of us is going to be dead around her," said Lasonya Mills, the mother of 16-year-old Brandon Mills who also died in the shooting.
Standing in front of her home, a picture of Brandon adorning the doorway, Mills said she is still waiting to learn who killed her son.
Reporters don't come around much anymore and the politicians, who once clamored to be by her side for the cameras, now offer little in the way of support.
"If you call the offices they screen you, they want to know what you want, don't nobody call back," she said. "But it's okay, it's okay. I just have faith and continue on praying."
Prayers alone won't solve this case. Only witnesses willing to testify will.
Miami Police spokesman Delrish Moss has heard the criticism of some outside the community who say, that if the people who live in the Liberty City neighborhood don't care enough to come forward and help, then why should anyone else care.
"Whenever you have people that will go out on a street corner and spray it with bullets," Moss said, "that's a person who has no regard for life and you definitely don't want that person out here."
The I-Team spent weeks talking to people in the neighborhood as well as those involved in the investigation.
We found out there were multiple shooters.
There were at least four different guns involved.
And the shooters fired more than 50 shots.
The two primary theories which have emerged is that the killings were either an attempt to rob the craps game being played or an act of retaliation for the Neo Brown murder.
Police still have not identified any suspects in the case.
But even if police do settle on a motive, they are still a long way from finding those responsible.
The woman, who initially identified Gloster as the person responsible for Brown's murder, now says she is no longer certain it was Gloster. Afraid that she might become a target herself, she now says she didn't get a good look at Brown's killer.
For the family and friends of Neo Brown, they told the CBS4 I-TEAM they are still waiting to be told what happened to Neo.
"Let us know what is happening at least," said Neo's girlfriend, Michelle Angervil.
"We wish we could find closure," added his sister Elmise Lubin.
The family said they are angry at Miami Dade detectives who are investigating Brown's death, claiming one of the detectives told them Neo "don't fit the description of a good guy."
Neo's family has also heard the stories that the shooting of Neo may have led to the mass shooting in Liberty City, but they don't believe it. They said Neo wasn't involved in any gangs and spent all of his time trying to build his music career.
Local record producers told the CBS4 I-Team Brown was extremely talented and on the verge of becoming the next big rapper to come out of Miami.
And no one around Neo, his friends and family said, would have retaliated his death.
"He loved his music," Angervil said. "His music was his life."
As Brown's family waits for answers so does the mother of Brandon Mills.
"I was patient and I'm still patient," she said, "but it's like my back is against the wall each day. I don't want to have patience no more. I'm angry. I'm hurting. It's killing me. My son wasn't in a gang. My son wasn't in the street thugging out.
"Brandon was a good kid," she continued. "He's not in the system. He's never been to jail. He was still in high school. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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