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Adam
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http://www.mlive.com/news/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/news-40/1162732802309430.xml&coll=5&thispage=1
By Bryn Mickle
bmickle@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6383
FLINT - The phone call came about 8:45 a.m. New Year's Day: "Ma, Kabraun is dead."
April Stone hung up the phone in disbelief - her 28-year-old son had been shot to death.
But that was just the beginning of the nightmare.
Stone, 49, wonders when she passes someone on the street if that person was the one who fired the bullets that ripped through her son's mouth and between his eyes.
"I don't know whose face I'm looking at," said Stone.
She's not alone.
Kabraun Stone's slaying is one of 21 this year that remain unsolved, according to Flint Journal records.
With nearly 50 homicides in Flint this year, April Stone says she doesn't believe police are doing enough to find her son's killer.
A rapper who went by the name "Kabraun Krook," Stone did time for robbing a dope house a dozen years ago and was wanted on a probation violation when he died.
And his mother can't help but wonder if her son's past run-ins with the law make his death less of a priority.
"It's like he wasn't fit to live," she said.
Others share Stone's frustration.
More than half of the families who seek support in dealing with the loss of a child to homicide don't have the closure that comes from an arrest, said Wanda Pierce, founder of Families of Murdered Children in Flint.
"We have several families that can't think of anything else," said Pierce. "They're obsessive with it."
About 100 families are enrolled in the group, and Pierce said a common complaint is the perception that Flint police don't understand how badly families want answers.
"They don't have the sympathy," said Pierce. "They put us in this little box. No one deserves to be murdered, and no one's family deserves to be put through that."
Acting Flint Police Chief Gary Hagler doesn't pretend to know what families of homicide victims go through. He talks with mothers of slain children but said he can never really know exactly how they feel.
"Unless you've walked in their shoes, you can't understand."
But Hagler said his detectives treat every case equally and never give up on finding killers.
"Homicide cases remain open forever."
Not like TV
Finding a killer can take anywhere from three hours to forever, said retired Flint homicide Detective Dennis Smalley.
Unlike television dramas in which everything is neatly wrapped up in an hour, Smalley said real-life homicides work on their own timetable with their own special sets of circumstances.
Smalley remembers finding victims alone in the street with no witnesses in sight - not even a single shell casing.
In other cases, Smalley was certain of the killer but could not gather enough evidence to get an arrest warrant.
About 60 percent of homicides nationwide are solved each year, and Flint has solved 56 percent of its homicides this year, said Hagler.
The solve rate is better than last year, when Flint police cleared 20 of the city's 49 homicides.
With a dozen detectives on hand to handle homicides, critical shootings and other crimes against people, Hagler said detectives try to make the best use of their time.
It doesn't help that police are sometimes stonewalled by the community they are trying to protect.
A street culture that labels anyone who cooperates with police a "snitch" makes it difficult for police to persuade witnesses to talk.
At one recent Flint shooting, a witness told her story to news reporters but refused to share her information with police, telling officers that to do so "would get me killed."
Police also must contend with the fact that some homicide victims may have been breaking the law at the time they were killed - a situation that makes witnesses reluctant to cooperate if they were also involved in criminal activity.
"It's difficult to solve crimes when folks won't talk to us," said Hagler.
In other slayings, police believe the killer may already be the victim of street justice in the form of retaliatory shootings.
Hagler said a suspect's death does not close a homicide case until there is definitive proof.
"(The suspect has) that question hanging over their head," said Hagler.
"It may be a wrong assumption."
If no arrests are made in the first 48 hours of a homicide case, odds grow longer that a killer will be caught.
But even as the trail grows cold and the tips dry up, police continue to search.
Working out of a tiny office in the basement of the Flint Police Department, a city detective and a state trooper go over cold cases for missed clues or new opportunities presented by changing technology.
The unit has had major successes solving cases, such as the 1986 whodunit murder of Flint music professor Margarette Eby, but that's a fraction of the estimated 400 unsolved cases dating back to the 1970s.
The unit currently has nearly 60 cold cases on file, including four double homicides.
Waiting for answers
April Stone waits for the call that her son's killer has been caught.
She said she has called investigators "hundreds" of times, but said she has gotten just three return calls.
"They tell me I watch too much TV and to let them do their job," Stone said.
Hagler acknowledges complaints about unreturned calls and said those are addressed when they come to his attention.
But Hagler said numerous phone calls consume time that can be spent solving crimes.
Sometimes families want information that police either don't know or won't release because they believe it would hurt the chances of catching a killer.
"Every case is a balancing act," said Hagler.
Undeterred, Stone flyspecks her son's autopsy reports for clues and thumbs through issues of "Guns and Ammo" for something that might spur the investigation.
She has complained to the city's ombudsman and at City Council meetings but said she has gotten nowhere.
"They just want me to shut up," she said.
But Stone said she will never give up.
Nothing will bring Kabraun back, but Stone said she wants his two sons, 6 and 17 months, to get justice.
"My son was a child of God," said Stone. |
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Sun Nov 05, 2006 3:30 pm |
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