East Side/West Side

Is Providence's cross-city feud the result of gang warfare, or
a series of grudges and misunderstandings?

by Jody Ericson

When Wayne "DJ Pearl" Baptista (aka Yellow Boy) was fatally shot on December 15, 1995, on the West Side of Providence, "it was like the part of the day that when you looked one way, is day, and if you looked the other way, it was dark," one eyewitness told police. Baptista, a lanky 20-year-old from the East Side with curly hair and a close-shaven moustache and beard, had been driving a rented green Dodge "the color of money," said the witness, a passenger in the car named Jason Sousa.

Hip-hop music (the Lost Boyz, Sousa thinks) thumped from the speakers, and as the pair approached Tropical Liquors on Cranston Street, Jason Sousa says he saw two men "pull hoodies over their faces" and draw guns from their waistbands.

As the shots rang out, Baptista leaned over, as if reaching for the car-door handle, so Sousa decided to bail and run for cover as well. Only later, Sousa said, did he realize that Baptista had slumped forward because he'd been hit by a bullet that had pierced his right lung and heart. Moments later, DJ Pearl had died amid the hum of late-afternoon traffic.

Like the dusk confronting daylight that evening, Baptista's death was the result of a collision between forces -- a feud between two groups of young men on Providence's East and West sides that stretched back nearly a decade but had flared in recent months into a kind of ricocheting violence: mess with my boy from the East Side -- and watch one of yours from the West Side die in return.

According to police and court records and interviews with neighbors, most of the major players in this feud would end up dead, in prison, or in hiding within a year -- like a final scene in a mobster movie. They would leave behind their girlfriends and mothers, who would keep the anger alive and repeatedly speculate about what had happened.

Three days after Baptista was murdered, a 26-year-old West Sider named John Carpenter was gunned down execution-style in what appeared to be retaliation. At least 21 bullets hit Carpenter (known as "Block" because of his big head) less than two blocks from the Baptista crime scene. Smashing Carpenter's skull, the bullets broke every bone in the right side of his head. Somebody had wanted to make sure that the Block would never get up again.

Although neighbors who'd witnessed the shooting could not identify Carpenter's assailants (the young men had been wearing face masks, hoods, or raccoon fur around their faces), Lorenzo Evans, a cousin of Carpenter's who had been riding in the car that morning, later told police they were "brothers" of DJ Pearl -- Gahill Oliveira, Pedro "Pooh" Sanders, Robert McKinney, Jason "Pockets" Ferrell, and Jermine "Buggy" Campbell.

On the East Side, a section of town running between North Main and Hope streets, Baptista and his five friends (all of whom had criminal records ranging from possession to attempted murder) had been inseparable, and the others had looked up to Baptista as a kind of big brother. After he died, they even tattooed their arms with "R.I.P. Pearl."

Later, on trial for the murder of Block Carpenter, the five became known as the "Carpenter 5." And in a final ricochet, Evans, who had almost made it out of the neighborhood two years earlier on a scholarship to a college in Virginia, was arrested in the killing of Baptista.

A YEAR and a half later, Baptista's grandmother, Isabella Amado, sits in the parlor of her plain brown house on Evergreen Street, where she lives with the rest of her family, including DJ's mother, Deb. The elderly woman soaks her feet in a plastic tub. Like many people her age, she complains about her health, but also notes the irony in the fact that she is still alive while two of her grandchildren (in April, Deb Baptista lost a second son in a stabbing) are dead. "Mothers are burying their children. That's the way it is these days," she says, pulling her housecoat close to her, "but it wasn't always this way."

Indeed, years ago African Americans from the East and West sides of Providence were one community. Kids from the West Side's Wiggins Village housing project, called the Vil for short, used to hang at a playground not far from the Baptistas' house and play basketball or a dice game called C-Low with East Siders.

If there was a problem and two kids wound up scrapping, "that kid's mother would call the other kid's mother and straighten everything out," says Robin Evans, Lorenzo's uncle. "But that doesn't happen anymore. Parents don't communicate."

According to Robin Evans, Lorenzo, known on the streets as Wax, grew up with Jermine Campbell, one of the defendants in the Carpenter 5 case. "They used to take the city bus together to basketball games at St. Andrew's in Barrington," where Lorenzo Evans played for the team and attended classes. But when Campbell started hanging with East Siders, says Robin Evans, the pair grew distant.

There are many rumors about when and why the relationship between the two sides of Providence began to sour. But in all of these a pattern emerges, one not unlike that of the famous Los Angeles feud between the Crips and the Bloods -- or even the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story. It has to do with women and turf.

As neighbors tell it, some 10 years ago a young woman was seeing two men from opposite sides of Providence. "She was from the East Side and was going with someone from the South Side who was living with people in the Vil," says Georgia Lucas, the girlfriend of Carpenter 5 defendant Gahill Oliveira. "On the side, she was messing with a guy from here. That's how everything started." Robin Evans has heard similar stories and also that the woman's name was "Dora."

All anyone knows for sure is that at some point, kids began to define themselves by where they came from. Turf developed, and while there were peaceful years during which both sides got along, the lines were drawn whenever violence erupted. And the more deadly this violence was, the more sophisticated each side became, until local activists worried they were seeing the beginning stages of gang organization and warfare.

"If you look at places like Los Angeles and Detroit, the gangs there started by defending their territories," says John Reis, a retired lieutenant from the Providence Police Department and the Rhode Island coordinator for a national program called Teens, Crime, and Community. Many times gangs defend their neighborhood for "economic reasons," he says -- someone from the other side of town starts dealing drugs on their street corner. Other times, they do so for no particular reason.

Although Providence has a handful of what would be classified as bonafide gangs, including a branch of the Latin Kings, Reis doesn't necessarily see the East/West feud as full-blown gang warfare. He breaks down the formation of gangs into three stages -- scavenger gangs, turf-related gangs, and "hard-core organized gangs" like the Latin Kings. The East and West sides fall between stages one and two -- scavenger and turf-related. "They don't hold any meetings or have a real leader or name," says Reis. "They just stand around on the corner and drink beer."

In some ways, though, scavenger groups can be more dangerous than organized ones. "Because there's no real leader, young kids go off half-cocked. There's no one pulling in the reigns," says Reis. "The Latin Kings, on the other hand, must go before a council, and anyone they kill must be sanctioned by the leadership."

By all appearances, there was nothing organized about the violence that killed DJ Pearl Baptista and Block Carpenter, the son of state Representative Marsha Carpenter, in December 1995. To get to the bottom of the problem is like following an extremely complicated plot in a novel -- to grasp the end, you must understand the beginning.

Five years ago, Baptista was severely beaten with a baseball bat after he confronted a West Sider who was roughing up his girlfriend. The girlfriend was a friend of Baptista's from the East Side. After this, Baptista's car was blown up, says his mother, and when the same West Sider got shot two years ago, he blamed Baptista.

In May 1995, the feud came to a head at a Notorious B.I.G. concert at the Living Room in Providence. That night, "all the younger kids from the East Side beat up the Village kids," says Georgia Lucas, and both sides were riled enough to go home and start shooting.

The dispute would set the stage for a much bigger East/West rivalry involving the very rap artist the Providence youths had gone to see. That March, Notorious B.I.G. was shot to death as he sat in his car outside a party celebrating the 11th annual Soul Train Music Awards. At the time, the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating whether his murder was tied to a feud between the East Coast and West Coast rap camps or whether it was payback for the death of B.I.G.'s West Coast rival, Tupac Shakur.

Like B.I.G, whose debut album was called Ready to Die, Baptista seemed to know his fate before it happened. How could he not have? Just a few days prior to his murder, word on the street was that the DJ was a dead man.

"LIFE IS BECOMING more like TV. Don't you find that?" Baptista's grandmother asks, on her feet now and gazing at a family portrait hanging from the paneled wall. Six years ago, when Deb Baptista moved to Cape Cod with her two youngest sons, her parents raised DJ Pearl (who didn't want to leave Providence) until Deb returned a couple of years ago. Devout Jehovah Witnesses, the Amados always tried to instill their faith in their grandson.

"Wayne was going to come back to the church," says his grandmother, Isabella Amado. Wayne Baptista talked about taking religious education classes, she says, and when his girlfriend had a baby, he promised to consider marrying the young woman and giving their daughter "a proper name."

Baptista's growing up within the confines of a strict religion like his grandparents' set him apart from his friends, says Lucas. "Wayne was special," she says, with a faraway look in her eyes. "He came from a good home." And Lucas was not the only one who admired him. Baptista's friends would have done anything for him.

The question of "life imitating TV" resurfaces a few days later during a telephone interview with Dr. Dan Okada, a gang specialist and professor of criminal justice at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Asked what turns a group of kids into a gang, Okada cites the chicken-and-egg dilemma -- "which came first, the gang or the media hype calling it a gang," he says. "I mean, in sociological terms, a gang is three or more people enjoined in criminal activity. A lot of groups fall into that."

Amid such random and frightening violence as the East Side/West Side feud, people try to simplify by resorting to stereotypes -- gang warfare, the grieving mother, innocent victims. Someone needs to be the bad guy, and, more important for our comfort, someone needs to be the good guy, particularly when a case has racial overtones, as this one does.

In June, Lorenzo Evans and his alleged accomplice, Rashaad Dailey, were virtually declared heroes after they were acquitted in the slaying of Baptista. According to news reports from the trial and interviews with the attorneys involved, the state's only eyewitness, Jason Sousa, had suddenly flip-flopped on the prosecution, telling the jury he couldn't quite remember who the killers were.

To many, the whole case seemed like a setup. After all, Sousa, who had ties to the Carpenter 5, had waited four months to tell police he'd been in the car with Baptista -- and had watched Dailey and Evans shoot him in cold blood. Evans also claimed the Carpenter 5 were using Sousa to blackmail him. In jail, Evans said, he had been repeatedly approached by the East Siders, who'd asked for his silence in the Carpenter case in exchange for theirs in the Baptista case.

"Lorenzo's no boy scout," Robin Evans, a slight, soft-spoken man in his mid-30s, tells me over lunch at the famous Twin Oaks restaurant/banquet hall in Cranston. But even this is an oversimplification, a glossing-over of the trouble Lorenzo Evans has been in since his days at St. Andrews.

Evans grew up in a housing project just across the street from Wiggins Village, the same project his mother and her eight siblings were raised in. From the start, though, his future looked brighter than most. A pastor at the local Methodist church found the young Lorenzo to be so intelligent, he helped the boy's mother pay for his education at St. Andrews, a private school in Barrington.

"He loved St. Andrews. It changed him," says Robin Evans. After high school, Lorenzo Evans went even further and was accepted at Norfolk State College in Norfolk, Virginia. But when his financial-aid package there fell through, the teenager drifted back to the West Side -- and to life on the streets of Wiggins Village. It wasn't long before he was in trouble with the law.

In an attempt to crack down on drug dealers and other negative influences on the housing project, police arrested Evans in September 1994 in Wiggins for trespassing and for possession of marijuana, after he allegedly stuffed four bags of pot under the back seat of the police cruiser. "Prior to that drug charge, Lorenzo could go to any side of town," says Robin Evans. "That's when everything changed."

Indeed, a year later, two men who'd gone to a West Side apartment to buy drugs were allegedly forced to their knees and robbed by a pair of handgun-wielding assailants -- Ronald Williams and a man known to them only by the nickname "Wax," according to a report in the Providence Journal-Bulletin. The case was dropped, however, after the two victims didn't show for their court date.

Evans, now 23, often stayed with his older cousin, Denise Gray, in the Vil, a tangle of government-subsidized low-rises with beat-up lawn chairs and toys out front. It was not the best environment for a young man teetering on the edge of serious trouble.

Most of the time, Gray stayed in the living room, "laying on the couch and watching TV," she says in court documents. But from her perch, she was at the center of the Vil's street scene, keeping track of the comings and goings of not only Evans but Carpenter and others. When the young men's mothers came looking for them, Gray would even cover for her tenants, according to one source, and say they weren't there.

In some cases, the parents hadn't heard from their sons for days or even weeks, and they wanted to make sure they were alright. Block's mother, Marsha Carpenter, for instance, had done everything she could to convince her son to stop selling drugs -- even beating him off the street corner with a belt, sources say. When that didn't work, Marsha Carpenter upgraded to a bat.

But like so many young men on the West and East sides, Block was too lost to be found, and the events that led to his death were set in motion long before December 1995.

What sealed it was an alleged threat.

According to court documents, Carpenter, possibly Evans, and one of their friends allegedly pointed a gun at Baptista the day before he was murdered, threatening, "You're dead. We're gonna get you, motherfucker."

If that's true, then the fact that Evans and Carpenter were targeted in another drive-by shooting a few days later is hardly surprising. Hearing shots fired from behind, the pair had looked back to see a black Jeep Cherokee driven by Pedro Sanders, Evans later testified. Oliveira and McKinney had been in the car, carrying semi-automatics, and Ferrell and Campbell had been waiting around the corner in a white Ford Taurus. While Evans had managed to escape the hail of bullets, Block Carpenter had died inches from his car.

What is surprising, say East Siders like Deb Baptista, is that while Evans was found innocent in Baptista's slaying, the Carpenter 5 were convicted almost solely on his testimony. What's more, Evans, grieving over the loss of his best friend and cousin, was not the most reliable witness.

In one instance, he swore that he and Carpenter had gone to breakfast prior to the shooting. Yet the medical examiner later testified that Carpenter's stomach had been empty when he'd died about an hour after that alleged meal. Evans also said he'd slept at his mother's the night before Block got shot, but Denise Gray testified that she was certain he'd crashed at her place.

Deb Baptista, Georgia Lucas, and other East Siders say they believe the outcomes of both cases were politically motivated -- that their boys got a bad deal because someone had to pay for the death of a state representative's son. (Marsha Carpenter declined to be interviewed for this story.) In their most desperate moments, they wonder whether Terrence Donnelly, the prosecutor in the Baptista murder trial, went easy on Evans in court in exchange for his testimony against the Carpenter 5.

"We continually pressured the state for evidence of a deal," says Vincent Indeglia, the attorney for Carpenter 5 defendant Robert McKinney. "Lorenzo's [alleged] crime was no less heinous than my guy's, and yet Lorenzo got out on bail when Robert didn't. I find that curious. Can I say there was a deal? I can't say that in good faith. If Terry Donnelly took a dive, that would shake my faith in the entire justice system."

In a written statement to the Phoenix, Attorney General Jeff Pine says that while he was "disappointed with the outcome of the Evans and Dailey case," he respected the jury's verdict. "Prosecuting crimes involving gangs sometimes presents complicated and difficult issues with witnesses," he says. "Sometimes there is a reluctance for a witness to come forward because of fear of retribution on the streets. Other times, the key witnesses may have criminal records themselves."

Pine's explanation, of course, doesn't satisfy Deb Baptista. She believes her son's killers, whoever they are, will probably never be brought to justice. "Remember, Wayne was killed first. Everybody forgets that. My son didn't kill no one," says Deb Baptista. "And if Lorenzo and Rashaad didn't kill my son, then who killed John and why did they kill him? You know what I'm saying?"

Indeed, these are the hardest questions that remain. Unfortunately, the answer is that whoever knows isn't saying.

IT IS VISITING HOUR at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) in Cranston, and Lucas, dressed in baggy, rolled-up jeans and a long white sweater, signs up to see her boyfriend Oliveira, who is in for life plus 40 years for his role in the Carpenter murder. Because she visits so often, Lucas is a familiar presence at the prison, and this evening she jokes easily with the guards.

Here to see daddy, little girls wearing big-bowed dresses and patent-leather shoes set off the metal detector as Lucas and the others walk down into the basement visiting area. A barrette, the guard figures out, is the culprit. Moments later, the jump-suited inmates make their timed entrance, and Oliveira, head hung low and turned to one side, walks over to Georgia. A few tables over, Carpenter 5 defendant Robert McKinney hugs his girl and their baby boy, who is named after Baptista.

As the allotted hour and a half ticks by, a story Georgia told about Oliveira and the others hovers above the conversation. The story didn't have anything to do with gangs or guns or so-and-so threatening so-and-so. It had to do with a few friends hanging in the city one lazy afternoon.

Oliveira, Baptista, and the rest of the guys used to play this game in which they took turns driving. Well, one day no one felt like being the designated chauffeur, so they all just sat there. Finally, Baptista got on his cellular phone and pretended like he was dialing up the police. "There's a suspicious blue car parked on my street," he said, stifling laughter. But the really funny part was that the cops actually showed and towed the car, which happened to be Oliveira's.

"Gahill was so mad," says Lucas. "He went like he was going to fight Wayne." Later at home, Oliveira felt so awful about the tiff, he called up the DJ to apologize. "I'm sorry, man," he said. "Come and pick me up." When Baptista died, says Lucas, Oliveira's whole world came crashing in.

Lucas says no matter what happens, she won't give up on Oliveira here in prison. "I'm in love with him," she says. "He is the best boyfriend I ever had." She talks about their life together in Maryland, where the couple and three of the five children between them almost escaped to a better life two years ago -- until they returned to the East Side for their friend DJ Pearl's funeral and all hell broke loose. "Nothing's going to change," says Lucas of the cross-city feud. "Not until God decides what he wants to do about it."

How to bring peace to inner cities like Providence's is perplexing, says Dr. Okada of Marist College. "Street gangs happen in areas where many of the male role models are in jail," he says. To get at gangs, then, is to get at why these men are in prison in the first place -- unemployment, drug abuse, firearms, overcrowded schools.

"One solution would be to give the community money to clean out these root problems," says Okada, "and to empower a community so that they have a say in their future." People need to feel in control of their neighborhoods, secure that they're on the right track to a better life. "The more disorganized a community, the more opportunity there is for gang pressure," says Okada.

On the way home from the ACI, Lucas herself repeats this theme when she mentions her fascination with organized crime. "I wouldn't mind if John Gotti ran my neighborhood," she says, staring out into the night. "I wouldn't mind it at all."

In a matter of hours, daylight will creep into her neighborhood, and the feud will continue.

Jody Ericson can be reached at jericson[a]phx.com.