To those who did not know him, Shaaliver Douse was an example of everything that can go wrong in a young life.
Though only 14, Shaaliver already had two gun-related arrests on his record when he was confronted by police officers early on Aug. 4 as he chased and shot at another teenager in the Bronx. The officers said they ordered him to drop the gun. Instead, he fired again. An officer shot and killed him.
In the days that followed, Shaaliver came to embody the worst possibilities of urban teenage life: a repeat offender caught up in a vicious rivalry with other gang members, one that erupted into violence at a time when most boys his age are home, safely asleep.
His death did not elicit expressions of outrage by elected officials. There were no mass rallies against police brutality, either. Shaaliver’s memorial service at a church in Harlem last week was largely unnoticed by the news media.
How a young boy grew into a teenager so enmeshed in violence remains a question that many who knew him are still struggling to answer. After being released pending trial on a gun charge in October, Shaaliver was arrested again in May on charges of attempted murder, suspected of shooting at a teenager from a rival gang, wounding him; the case was dropped after the victim stopped cooperating.
“He said he had the gun for protection,” said Victor Schurr, the defense lawyer representing Shaaliver in the October gun case. “He didn’t give me the impression he was a troublemaker. He said there were some other people in the community, and he was in danger of being hurt.”
Kevin O’Connor, an assistant commissioner at the New York Police Department who follows gang violence, said he had never seen “a kid with three gun scenarios in nine months in my 25 years of dealing with youth.”
http://nyti.ms/16FqjyA
