Four defendants are members of the "Sureño Villains 13" street gang. Just before midnight Saturday they had argued with several members of the rival "Norte" gang at a South Park gas station. Apparently, the Sureños were angry that the Nortes had been marking out the Sureños' graffiti "tags."When the Sureños warned them to leave their tags alone, the Nortes just laughed, the documents say. The Sureños talked about shooting the Nortes right then and there but decided against it because a gas-station surveillance camera might record them.Meanwhile, the Nortes ran away, down an alley. But about 20 minutes later, the Sureños found their foes behind a house in the 1000 block of South Sullivan Street, the documents say.Gomez-Pablo parked the SUV, and Rapisura, Gomez-Cervantes and Santos got out and ran toward the Nortes. Several shots rang out, and Joshua S. Vanhalteren was hit once in the back, the documents say.Vanhalteren ended up at Harborview Medical Center, but his wound was not life-threatening, police said.After the shooting, the Sureños ran back to the SUV, and Gomez Pablo drove out of South Park, intending to go to his house in West Seattle. But two Seattle police detectives driving toward the scene of the shooting spotted the SUV, and the foursome was stopped on Interstate 5.A police report says detectives found two semi-automatic pistols — both empty — in the SUV, along with some gang paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana.Of the four men charged in the crime, only Rapisura has a criminal record. Prosecutors say he has twice been convicted of assault.
''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an...
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