Salisbury police investigators believe Height associates with West Main Chain Gang members and its affiliates and that the bus and cafeteria fights were part of an "ongoing gang war" between two rival gangs in the city: Bloods and Crips. Police allege the planned shooting by Heist was 48 assaults in Wicomico County public schools this school year, according to the Wicomico County Sheriff's Office. Last year there were 259 assaults and one firearm incident.About seven hours before the bus left Thursday, several students were involved in a fight in the school cafeteria. By the afternoon, a sheriff's deputy learned the fight wasn't going to stop with the cafeteria brawl and informed city police that bus No. 70 was going to be "shot up" in the Delaware Avenue and West Main Street area by the same males who seized the bus and assaulted a student, according to court documents.By 3:30 p.m., two city officers were on a stakeout close to a convenience store located near the area where the shooting was supposed to occur when they saw the two males. One fled when the officers approached him. The .22-caliber handgun in his waistband could be seen while he was running, according to officers.After tackling and struggling with the suspect, the officers were able to take him into custody. Police charged Damien Maurice Height, 18, of the 800 block of Booth Street with assault, disorderly conduct and two handgun violations."This is another handgun that we were able to get off the streets that's not out there now," said Cpt. Mark Tyler, head of the Salisbury Police Department Criminal Investigation Division.
''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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