Gang Alert Millwood Shooting Is Wake-Up Call To Spread Of Gang Activity In Valley

CORRECTION: Valley Voice, August 31, 1995: Laurie Tolbert, not Jackie Bellefeuille, heard the shots fired during last week’s shooting in Millwood.

Fear, concern and questions radiated from Millwood this week following a gang-related drive-by shooting.

“Where are they getting those guns?” resident Jackie Bellefeuille wondered. “Why are they shooting?”

Gunfire erupted at the corner of Buckeye and Argonne about 11:40 p.m. Sunday. At least nine bullets fired by occupants of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo ripped through the side of a silver Nissan Sentra, injuring three of that car’s five occupants.

Deputies say the occupants of the two cars knew each other and that the shooting was not a random act of violence.

The shooting took place just blocks from West Valley High School and Millwood Elementary School and frightened residents of the surrounding neighborhood.

“It’s scary,” Bellefeuille said. “It’s too close to home.” Bellefeuille lives behind the elementary school and heard the shots.

Students who attend West Valley High School were shocked by Sunday’s violence.

“Everybody thinks the Valley’s a safe place,” a West Valley freshman said. “No one really thought this could happen here.” West Valley students say they have been more careful when they go out at night. The teenagers say they are paying closer attention to who they talk to, what they say and even how they look at people in other cars.

“You realize it doesn’t take much for someone to have the motivation to kill you,” the freshman said.

West Valley students must face a reality that extends beyond just the proximity of the violence.

Both Jeremy Johnson, the 17-year-old who deputies say admitted driving the Monte Carlo and firing one shot, and Torrey Lowery, the 18-year-old driver of the other car who was shot in the chest, attended West Valley during part of the last school year. Johnson has been charged with five counts of first-degree assault.

“These guys went to our school and walked down our halls,” Sarah Shawen, a junior at West Valley, said. “We used to see them all the time in our neighborhoods.”

Added West Valley junior Kiesha Sowers: “The crime problem didn’t hit home until it was guys we went to school with.”

Deputies said the shooting was gang-related. They said two other people who were in Johnson’s car at the time of the shooting - both still at large - have ties to Hispanic gangs in Yakima, Moses Lake and the Tri-Cities. A blue bandana - a symbol indicative of gangs - hung from Lowery’s rearview mirror.

That gang connection is worrisome to many people who live in the neighborhoods near the scene of the shooting.

“What bothers me the most is those high school boys now have an attitude,” Bellefeuille said.

Laurie Tolbert, who lives between the high school and the elementary school, was leery of a car full of youths that drove through her neighborhood five times the day after the shooting.

“They’re looking for something,” Tolbert said. “That makes me nervous.”

Increased awareness and involvement is the best way to combat violence and crime, according to officials at SCOPE West Valley, a neighborhood Sheriff’s Department substation.

“As people that live in our community, we know the most about our neighborhoods,” said Bill Langdon, president of SCOPE West Valley.

The community policing organization has pledged to fight back. The group took a stand against violence with a candle-light vigil Friday night in the parking lot of the Albertsons store at 8851 E. Trent, where the injured youths went after Sunday’s shooting to call for help.

The shooting sparked concern among residents of other parts of the Valley. Nancy Cowles, secretary of SCOPE East in Otis Orchards, said several people worried about safety have called or stopped by that groups’s office since the shooting.

SCOPE West Valley is organizing a citizen’s group to patrol neighborhoods frequently hit by crime. A similar patrol will monitor students at Centennial Middle School before and after school this year and could also be extended to include West Valley High School, Langdon said.

Rumblings of implementing a curfew to help curb the violence have also begun to surface. But the idea is not without its skeptics and Langdon is one.

“The kids don’t mind their parents,” Langdon said. “How you going to enforce it?”

And that is where many residents feel the problem lies. Many called for greater parental involvement in the lives of their children.

“I think it’s the responsibility of the parents to make sure their kids don’t get into stuff like that,” Tolbert said. “It’s the parents’ responsibility to know where their children are.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo