A Moment's Anger, a Lifetime to Regret

Family of Jailed Brothers Mourns Shooting Death of Chelsea, Loss of Young Men's Futures

Her jailed sons, the accused killers of 8-year-old Chelsea Cromartie, are not allowed to see visitors at the same time. One goes out and then the other walks in when their mother comes to see them.

Last week, as they passed each other at the D.C. jail, the brothers reached out to touch each other's handcuffed fists. Cheryl Hall, describing the encounter with her sons, said the image brought home the horror of everything that has happened this month.

"Everybody is going through their own private hell right now," she said.

Raashed and Ricardo Hall, the baby boys of a close-knit family, are charged with first-degree murder. They and their family are confronting both the legal implications of the case and its moral underpinnings. The two brothers have told investigators that they are responsible for the stray gunshot that killed Chelsea on May 3 as she sat in a living room watching television.

Raashed was disconsolate in a recent telephone conversation, said his aunt, Patricia Ellis.

Melody McKeython, his 20-year-old sister, nodded. "He's worried about jail, but he's more worried about God."

"About forgiveness," Ellis explained. "He wanted to know if God can forgive him. His conscience is whipping up on him real bad. That little girl is dead. It's terrible."

Once police began focusing on him, several days after the shooting, Raashed, 21, gave detectives a videotaped statement describing how he fired the shots to avenge a dispute at a nearby carryout. Ricardo, 23, gave a videotaped account as well and told police where to find the gun. Their father went to the Cromartie family to apologize.

"At the proper time, we'd all like to go to Chelsea's family and apologize and pay our respects," Ellis said. "This is just not who we are. It's not who the boys are."

Raashed and Ricardo, born 22 months apart, were inseparable from the beginning.

They and their three siblings came of age in the same house everyone in the family did: the brick rowhouse on the southeastern edge of Capitol Hill, bought by their grandmother a half-century ago, a place that remains a magnet for the family.

The Halls were church-going hard workers, office managers and typists and caregivers and television technicians. Cheryl Hall and Rick McKeython stressed the values of family, education, church and honest effort to their children. The family picture album is filled with snapshots from birthday parties, outings to New York and Hershey Park and around-the-house ventures.

"Sunday morning, the boys were in suits and ties and me in a dress," said Melody McKeython, the younger sister. "There were no exceptions and no excuses. At home, you couldn't just say you were going down the street. Our parents were very strict; they were very concerned. We did everything with a cousin or a brother or sister."

Rick McKeython and Hall divorced when the boys were in middle school, family members said. The boys moved in with their father, a few miles away, but the family remained close.