The brawl started as a fistfight in the hallway and ended as a crime scene outside the cafeteria of Ballou Senior High School. Star football player James Richardson was shot dead, another teenager was wounded and Thomas J. Boykin would soon be arrested on a charge of second-degree murder while armed.
No one has said what the students were arguing about just before the shooting last Monday. But police and school officials, community residents and friends of the victim and suspect seem to agree that those details hardly matter.
William Patterson, left, said his son James Richardson, who was slain last week, was so fearful of violence that he stayed home from school for several weeks. With him is his brother, Kenneth Patterson.
(Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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High School Junior Slain
_____Live Discussion_____
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Transcript: Dr. Pamela Riley, executive director of the National Association of Students Against Violence Everywhere discussed school security.
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Audio: Police Chief Charles Ramsey Discusses School Security
_____Ballou Slaying_____
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Slaying Defendant 'Panicked' (The Washington Post, Dec 7, 2004)
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Ballou Shooting Was in Self-Defense, Lawyer Says (The Washington Post, Dec 1, 2004)
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Student's Death Left D.C. School With Questions (The Washington Post, Mar 21, 2004)
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D.C. Jail Inmates Threaten Life Of Ballou Student, Mother Says (The Washington Post, Mar 6, 2004)
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Students, Leaders Talk Out Troubles at Ballou High (The Washington Post, Feb 22, 2004)
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Police Offer Plan for Security at Ballou High (The Washington Post, Feb 18, 2004)
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Ballou Shooting Suspect, Victim Fought for Months (The Washington Post, Feb 5, 2004)
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Suspect, 18, Surrenders in Slaying at Ballou (The Washington Post, Feb 4, 2004)
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Trust, Not Cameras, Called Best Prevention (The Washington Post, Feb 3, 2004)
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Teen's Dreams Lost to Lure of Streets (The Washington Post, Feb 3, 2004)
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Anxious Parents Demand Answers (The Washington Post, Feb 3, 2004)
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The fight, they said, boiled down to geography: the youths from Barry Farm and the youths from around Condon Terrace writing another chapter in a feud that has been going on for about 20 years between the two Southeast Washington neighborhoods.
Legend has it that the feud started after a Barry Farm youth stole a coat from a teenager in Condon Terrace. It has simmered ever since, residents and police say, erupting from time to time over the "wrong" look, a petty theft, jealousy, a comment about someone's girlfriend, a taunt or shove at a go-go club.
Unlike the gang violence that has claimed most of the city's young homicide victims in recent years, the clashes between youths from the two communities typically do not revolve around drugs. The fights are about pride and loyalty, about loosely-knit groups of teenagers standing up for their neighborhood as an extension of themselves, say longtime residents.
For some of the youths in these impoverished public housing complexes -- living in dysfunctional families and in despair about their futures -- where they live is who they are.
"It's like a form of slavery," said David J. Venable, an assistant head football coach at Ballou who spent parts of his childhood in both areas. "You're born into it. When they get 5 years old, everybody knows that Condon Terrace is your enemy and Barry Farm is your master; and it's like, 'I have to protect my master.' It's pathetic that our generation is in this predicament, but . . . you can't take [the] chains off."
Kevin Bumbry, 48, who lives in Condon Terrace, calls it "a generational curse."
"These children heard it from the older guys . . . and they want to act it out," he said.
The antagonism between the two neighborhoods is not the only such rivalry in the city, and some of the other territorial feuds are even older.
"I was with Kennedy Street and Decatur Street, and we were fighting Riggs Park, and they still don't get along," said Theophus Brooks, 55, who grew up in Northwest Washington and is the former head of the D.C. school system's Youth Gang Task Force. "You ask why you don't get along? I don't know. But I know where you live at, and you'd better align yourself with your neighborhood."
Feuds that were once confined to the streets now are playing themselves out in schools, officials say, and the level of violence has escalated considerably.
"Guns are available, and kids are quick to use them because the peer pressure is so great," Brooks said. If someone feels slighted in an argument, "he can't sleep at night, thinking [about] what he's going to do. His friends say, 'Are you going to handle your business?' The peer pressure is so great, you're going to do something about it. They've got to play this movie all the way to the end ."
For years now, the feud between Barry Farm and Condon Terrace -- neighborhoods only about 21/2 miles apart -- has spilled into Ballou, said Art Bridges, the school's principal. He said there are 60 to 90 Ballou students who live at Barry Farm Dwellings, a public housing complex with 432 units that was built in 1943 just off Anacostia Freeway, and 90 to 100 students from the Condon Terrace neighborhood, where the 204-unit Highland Dwellings, built in 1942, is located.
