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Police say revenge motive in shooting

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published April 2, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - It doesn't take much for kids to start a neighborhood feud in this city. A look. A shove. A hand sign flashed at the wrong person.

Before long, somebody swings a fist or reaches for a knife. Last week, after a brawl at the Wildwood recreation center, two teenagers decided to get a gun and drive around hunting for revenge, police said.

Police say those teenagers shot 15-year-old Deandre "Squirrel" Brown, a chunky kid who was hanging around the streets of Harbordale in the early morning of March 24.

For decades, kids from different neighborhoods have tussled. It is commonly known that Bethel Heights kids and Childs Park kids don't mix.

Like many other victims, Deandre was caught in the crossfire of a fight between others. He wasn't at Wildwood when the brawl broke out, and he probably wasn't the shooter's target. Instead, he was collateral damage.

Talisa Brown, 15, a Gibbs High student who was at Wildwood, remembers being stunned to learn that her cousin had been killed. "So many people from Harbordale were calling me and they were all like: 'How they going to kill innocent people? Why'd they kill Deandre,'" Brown said.

Moriah Love, 14, a classmate of Deandre's at John Hopkins Middle School, said kids from other neighborhoods often tussled with Deandre in school.

Just days after the shooting, police arrested two teens. Tyree Gland, 17, was the gunman and 18-year-old Raymond Adams was the driver, police said.

Both went to Wildwood on March 23. A party at the recreation center was supposed to be for 50 people, but several hundred teens showed up and hung around the parking lot.

After police broke up the gathering, some kids started fighting. No one is sure what sparked the brawling, though several teens say it involved friends of Deandre and kids from Childs Park and other neighborhoods. So the two suspected of the drive-by shooting went looking for revenge, police said.

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8472.

[Last modified April 2, 2007, 01:17:35]