It is Thursday, Dec. 15, 2005, shortly after 9 p.m. in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven at 3848 E. McKinley Ave. in Sector 4. That's the Tacoma Police Department's designation for the city's East Side, where gangs are waging war.

Of shootings and drive-bys logged by police, this is the 61st of the year in Sector 4, the sixth in December. The number will grow.

In a red car, a boy bleeds all over the back seat.

Daquan Stallworth, 14, is gut-shot, passing out, but he can't go to the hospital - not yet, not until his friends swap cars and ditch the red Ford seen by witnesses. 2

Only minutes old, this moment spreads - out, out, in virulent waves.

It soon kills two young men. It hurls at least 14 youths into juvenile detention or jail on charges ranging from gun possession to murder. It drowns a family in grief.

"It's too much," says Ranae Oya, who buried one son two days after Christmas, watched another go to jail and, nine days later, mourned a nephew shot to death.

"It's too much."

'Everybody loses'

Gangsters shoot gangsters. Red meets Blue. It happens in Tacoma - a numbing routine, clicking like a metronome: the rhythm of youths burning their lives away.

It happened in the late 1980s and early '90s in the Hilltop neighborhood, then the epicenter of gang violence. It happens now in Sector 4.

"Kids killing kids. Everybody loses: Someone loses a son, someone loses a kid because they're gonna go to prison," says police spokesman Mark Fulghum. "Many, many times, totally innocent people are the victims and they don't have anything to do with what's going on."

Between 2002 and 2004, crime statistics show drive-bys and shootings doubled on the East Side, jumping from 29 to 65, the most of any sector in the city. Not all were gang-related, but police use the statistic as a barometer of gang activity. Last year saw 63 such incidents - again, the most in the city. The numbers haven't reached the hundreds seen on the Hilltop in the old days, but they are climbing.

As of Wednesday, there have been 35 shootings and drive-bys on the East Side this year. If the pace holds, 2006 will be almost twice as violent as 2005. Despite numerous arrests, the war on the East Side escalates.

"It's on fire," says Lawrence Stone, 39, an East Side activist and former gangster turned youth counselor. He knows many of the teen soldiers fighting the war.

He spends his days trying to stop it, but he fears the nights, the future, the twisted logic of gangsters who lap up media attention and kill for fame.

"I'm not telling you a possibility," he says. "I'm telling you that it's 100 percent that it is going to happen. That's the mentality. That's the reality of gangbanging. There will be gas thrown into the fire."

The gangsters cross the ethnic spectrum - native, white, black, Latino and mixtures of each. There are tribal gangs and nontribal gangs, but affiliations and names can change by the day.

Some gangsters come from fractured families. Others learn the gang culture from older siblings, relatives, even parents. Few clear patterns emerge, save youth, poverty and violence.

The war is fun. There are secret names, code words, missions and enemies wearing blue and red. The rules are simple.

"The rules is pain, is hurt," says Tamika Foley, mother of Daquan Stallworth. "Pain, hurt and suffering, anger and sometimes revenge."

Shooting at the sky

Police trace the origins of the war's deadliest salvo to Dec. 15, when Daquan Stallworth and three fellow members of ESP - the East Side Pirus ("Pye-roos") - pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot and ran into a group of NGCs - Native Gangster Crips.

Reports from multiple court documents described the scene: With Stallworth rode his older brother, Dominique "Bones" Stallworth, 16; Tony "Nuke" Batiste, 15; and Raymond "Lil 9" Power, 20. Daquan Stallworth had a nickname, too: "Lil DV."

The two brothers rode in the back of the red Ford Fiesta. Batiste sat up front. Power drove; the car belonged to his mother.

At 9:07 p.m., a store clerk called 911 - someone in a red car was shooting at the sky. Moments later, a dark-colored SUV pulled into the lot. The clerk saw a man step out of the back seat with a gun, walk toward the Fiesta and start firing.

The Fiesta started pulling out. The man on foot kept shooting, and someone in the Fiesta - Batiste and Power, 3 according to witnesses - shot back. The cops were coming. The Fiesta and the SUV peeled away. The man on foot ran. The sirens closed in. When police arrived, everyone was gone.

The cops interviewed the 7-Eleven clerk, radioed the vehicle descriptions and sent a dog after the shooter. No luck.

Slipping

June 2003: Daquan Stallworth, 13, is jumping, all knees and elbows, slicing through the summer air. He represents McIlvaigh Middle School in a track meet at the Lincoln Bowl. In the stands, Lawrence Stone watches the boy and praises him. The teen has been having a hard time at school, slipping into the gang life, but he is young, bright. He has a chance.

The boy's mother, Tamika Foley, is 27 and alone. She had this child, Daquan, when she was 14, his older brother when she was 12. 4 She was a gangster in those days, running on the Hilltop. She says when she was four months pregnant, a jealous boyfriend shot her in the leg.

"It don't hurt," she says, remembering the feeling. "It burns."

For a while, Stone's mentoring seems to help. But by fall 2004, Daquan has slipped again, been suspended from school. He attends the Maxine Mimms Academy in Tacoma, a program that helps suspended students catch up on the schoolwork they're missing. 5

Eventually, he earns his way back to school.

Between life and death

While the police searched for the 7-Eleven shooters, the Pirus switched cars, piled the semi-conscious Daquan into the back seat and headed for the hospital. At 9:23 p.m., a Puyallup Tribal Police officer stopped a gray Chevrolet on East Portland Avenue, near the P&J Deli. The Pirus and Daquan were in the car.

Tacoma cops raced to the deli. They pulled Daquan out of the car, called an ambulance and started questioning the other three gangsters, who told conflicting stories of the shooting. Two - Power and Batiste - said they hadn't been there. 6 In the ambulance, Daquan drifted. He died three times on the way to the hospital, his mother says. The paramedics kept bringing him back.

Tamika Foley's phone rang.

"I knew one day I was gonna get this call," she says. "I knew it was my baby."

Doctors tried to save Daquan's life. The bullet had ripped into his internal organs. The surgeons lost him once, his mother says, but pulled him back.

Police knew the Pirus and NGCs were fighting on the East Side. This wasn't the first shooting, but it was the worst in months.

Blue had wounded Red. The Pirus had a fresh cause - payback for Daquan.

First offense

Feb. 28, 2005, 1:48 a.m.: Daquan Stallworth is running, veering away from the police, diving into brush near a gas station on East 72nd Street.

Two of his friends climb a fence and get away. Daquan does not. The cops catch him and find a gun in the bushes - a loaded .22-caliber revolver. He says it isn't his.

They bust him for unlawful gun possession - his first offense. He admits he's a Piru, and says he joined the gang about three weeks earlier. He pleads guilty in juvenile court.

The sentence: 30 days in juvenile detention, 12 months of community supervision. The conditions: no guns, no contact with gang members, go to school, stick to a 6 p.m. curfew, pay a $100 fine. He signs his name on the sentencing order in tiny letters.

During his 30 days in detention, Pierce County Juvenile Court officials try to move Daquan from his mother's home to his grandfather's, hoping that will be a better environment. His grandfather refuses to accept the arrangement. 7

The court sends the teen to the county's department of children and family services. On March 30, the day his sentence ends, he runs away. The court issues a warrant for his arrest.

Possible suspect

Working through tips, interviews and rosters of known gangsters on both sides, detectives picked up a possible name for the NGC shooter who fled the 7-Eleven on foot - Dale Allen Oya, 19. At some point, another name surfaced - Donald George-Oya, 18, also an NGC.

Police from Tacoma and the Puyallup tribal force knew both teens well - cousins, members of a large family, known gangsters.

Allan Gerking, the tribal police school resource officer at Chief Leschi School, knew Dale from encounters at school, Donald from street contacts.

Donald George-Oya had twin affiliations with the 40 Block Crips and the NGCs, blue groups that had grown more active in the last few years on the East Side. Gerking knew Donald as a confident, streetwise sort, the type who would come up and shake his hand with a smirk. Though Donald was a gangster, Gerking says he never had a reason to arrest him.

Court records show Tacoma police thought Dale Allen Oya and Donald George-Oya were living at a home in the 3500 block of East L Street, where previous shootings had been reported. The trouble was, the Pirus knew it too.

Young and in trouble

Dec. 28, 2000: Donald George-Oya, 13, and his 12-year-old brother are loitering at a dollar store on East 72nd Street, harassing customers and annoying a store clerk, who tries to shoo them away. 8

The boys ignore him. The clerk calls police. They arrive and tell the boys to leave. The boys ride off on their bikes.

After police depart, the boys return. This time, they threaten to kill the clerk.

A year later, Donald is arrested and convicted for car theft. He completes the 10th grade at Chief Leschi School, and drops out.

Another incident

While Daquan Stallworth lay comatose in the hospital, a second, minor tremor of violence shook the East Side on Dec. 18, three days after the 7-Eleven shooting.

No one was wounded or injured, but word travels fast among gangsters - the NGCs weren't letting up, and Donald George-Oya was making a name for himself.

According to court documents, a trio of NGCs - Donald; his cousin, Jazmine Knaus, 16; and Santos Gomez, 17 - drove past a house on a tattered dead end in the 2000 block of East Columbia Avenue. Like Donald, Knaus and Gomez had lengthy juvenile records.

A witness told police the NGCs shouted obscenities and gang taunts, adding that Donald stepped out of the car and fired a round toward the house before the group drove away.

As the witness was describing the incident to police, the same car drove by.

"That's it!" she exclaimed.

The cops stopped the car. Knaus and two other juveniles were inside. There was no sign of Donald George-Oya, but a handgun was nestled in a blue bag on the back seat. A records check showed it was stolen. Knaus was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm - her third arrest in three years.

Almost a clean slate

Dec. 15, 2003: Jazmine Knaus, 14, drives a stolen car through Lakewood, pushing the speedometer to 74 - almost 40 over the limit. Riding with her is Santos Gomez, 15.

Trying to lose the cops, she pulls onto Interstate 5, swerving in and out of traffic. She exits the freeway, passing cars, and veers into a dead end. Mistake, she tells the police later - she could have gotten away.

On Jan. 8, 2004, the juvenile court offers a deal: Stay clean, go to school, live at home, stay away from Santos, have no guns, pay restitution. Meet those conditions for a year, and the charge goes away.

A year later, on Jan. 7, 2005, all Jazmine has to do is show up for a disposition hearing. She doesn't. The price: an arrest warrant.

In February 2005, police catch her running from another stolen car. She serves 38 days in juvenile detention. When she gets out, the court can't find anyone willing to take custody of her. She spends a few days in custody of the county's children and family services division.

Wrong victim

On Dec. 19, the war claimed another victim. It was 3 a.m., and the house on East L Street was quiet.

Shots blew through the wall.

"Uncle, uncle! They're shooting!" 9 said Joseph Dillon, 22, leaping up from a chair.

Dillon's 47-year-old uncle, Dale H. Oya, 10 yelled to Joe.

"Get down!"

A window shattered.

"Uncle, I'm shot!" Dillon said, and fell.

Witnesses later reported hearing multiple shots, then a brief gap, then one more that sounded bigger - the one that hit Dillon.

The round plowed through his torso. Within hours, Dillon was dead, slain by mistake.

According to his family and most of those who knew him, Dillon wasn't a gangster. Detectives believed the shooters hit the wrong target.

"Investigation has shown that the target of the gunfire on Dec. 19th was very likely Donald George," court documents say. "… The apparent genesis of the series of retaliatory shootings was the shooting and near death of Daquan Stallworth on Dec. 15th, 2005." 11

Dillon's mother, Ranae Oya, says her son was frail, diagnosed with a debilitating disease when he was a child.

She says she moved to Puyallup from Tacoma's East Side to get her children away from the gangs. The night of the shooting, she says, she was working and had planned to pick her son up at his uncle's house. 12

"My son's not even gang-affiliated," she says. "I lost him because of stupid crap."

Unlike some of his relatives, Dillon finished high school at Leschi. In the Internet guest book for his News Tribune obituary, Leschi teacher Maureen Zarrella offered a memory.

"I was Joe's teacher for his senior year," Zarrella wrote. "We learned a little about English and math and geography together. I learned to appreciate a quiet, sweet and soulful young man. I'm sure he is in the arms of the Creator now. Rest peacefully, Joe."

The shooting of Daquan Stallworth had heightened gang tension, and he was still in a coma. Dillon's death added heat, transforming an assault investigation into a murder case.

Police were working against time. Still, they could not find the NGCs believed involved in the Stallworth shooting - and they were learning the Pirus blamed Donald George-Oya for it.

Escalating troubles

May 3, 2005: Donald George-Oya, 17, rides the handlebars of a bike pedaled by a friend. The tandem almost hits a car pulling out of a driveway in Lakewood.

A police officer sees the near collision, and flags down the youths. Donald and his friend give false names. The officer starts writing citations. They run away. The officer catches them and puts them in a patrol car.

In the back seat, Donald spits on the upholstery and windows. He kicks at the window, hard enough to bend the frame. He is arrested and convicted for malicious mischief, and sentenced to 20 days in jail.

One in jail, one on the run

On Dec. 23, police found 19-year-old Dale A. Oya, a key suspect in the 7-Eleven shooting. He was attending the funeral for his brother, Joseph Dillon. According to charging documents, Oya admitted being at the 7-Eleven and firing at the red Fiesta. He said he was the only one shooting.

He was arrested and charged with first-degree assault. His trial is set for May 22. Oya, currently in Pierce County Jail, declined The News Tribune's request for an interview. One of Ranae Oya's sons was dead. The other, Dale, was in jail. Her nephew, Donald George-Oya, was on the run.

Word on the street said the Pirus were saving a bullet for Donald - retribution for Daquan, still unconscious in the hospital.

Broken promises

July 25, 2005: Daquan Stallworth is smiling, telling the police about the old man who wouldn't give up his cigarettes.

The man, 53, was walking along Sixth Avenue when one of Daquan's friends stepped up, asked for smokes and reached into the man's pocket. The man refused and walked away. Daquan and two friends chased down the man and beat him up, crushing his glasses. The cops are reading Daquan his rights.

He curses and laughs, saying, "We kicked that old f-----'s ass."

He pleads guilty to fourth-degree assault. He spends 14 days in detention, and agrees to 12 months of community supervision. The sentence repeats itself: No guns, no contact with gangsters, go to school, 6 p.m. curfew. Again, he signs it.

Three months later, Daquan and three other red gangsters threaten a security guard and a pair of assistant principals who try to make them leave the grounds of Lincoln High School.

Police arrest him. He pleads guilty to trespassing and spends 18 days in detention. Once more, a sentencing order follows: Go to school, live at mom's house, 6 p.m. curfew, stay out of trouble. He signs it.

His mother tries. She tells him he can be good, praises his artistic talent, tells him the gang life is not the answer.

He hears, but does not listen. He keeps ignoring the rules, skipping school, skipping drug treatment appointments. The day after Thanksgiving, his mother kicks him out of the house.

"Until you get your mind right, you don't come home," Tamika Foley tells her son. 13

For three weeks, she hears nothing from him. On Tuesday, Dec. 13, he calls.

"Mom, you know it's gonna be my birthday - what are you gonna do?" the boy asks.

He will be 15 in five days. She tells him to come home.

Two nights later, he gets shot at the 7-Eleven.

Another death

On Christmas Day, two days after Joseph Dillon's funeral, another death crushed his mother's family.

Ranae Oya's nephew, 12-year-old Gerald Reed Jr., was hit by a car as he walked across Pacific Avenue, clutching a handful of store-bought snacks for a family movie night. A 44-year-old East Side man later turned himself in to police. He said he'd been drinking. The death of the boy known to his family as "Baby G" wasn't gang-related - but Ranae Oya and her sister, Carrie Richardson, had lost two sons in less than a week.

'It ain't worth it'

The day after Christmas, Daquan Stallworth opened his eyes and saw his mother's face. Words creaked out.

"It hurts," he said.

"I ain't gonna wear red no more," he said. "It ain't worth it. I used to think it was fun - it's not fun. It ain't worth it. I'm tired."

Tamika Foley looked at her son and nodded. She meant to get him out, to move to Florida. He would have a fresh start.

"I don't want you dead," she told him. "I don't have no black dress - and I ain't gonna buy one."

A moment of peace

On Dec. 27, as a final memorial to Joseph Dillon, Tacoma religious leaders held a "moment of blessing" outside the bullet-pocked house on East L Street. The blessings, created by local clergy, are symbolic - intended to spiritually cleanse ground stained by homicide.

At the ceremony, the Rev. Ron Vignec, white-bearded soul of the East Side Lutheran Mission, saw a familiar face - Donald George-Oya, suspected target of the shooting that killed Dillon.

Vignec asked the teen if he wanted to take part in the blessing. Donald nodded. The pastor handed him a piece of paper with the blessing verses.

"Pastor, I can't read," Donald said.

He couldn't read the sheet, but he knew the words from memory, and led the small crowd in prayer:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

When the blessing was over, Vignec and Donald talked a little about the war. The teen knew he was a target.

"I may have to take one for the boys," Donald said.

Retribution

The old year gave way to the new. It rained and rained.

Around 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 5, Donald George-Oya pedaled a bicycle along East 40th Street, headed toward East I Street.

An affidavit filed in February by police, citing a confession from one Piru to another, describes what happened next. 14

As Donald passed a gravel alley on the left, a car rolled forward. A young man got out and walked toward him, holding a gun.

"Don't shoot me," Donald said.

The man smiled and fired.

Wounded, Donald tried to pedal away. The man chased him and fired again - 13 times.

Police believe at least one more shooter followed, running after Donald, firing and firing. Donald fell. The shooters surrounded him, fired some more and fled.

First Dillon, then Baby G, then Donald - Ranae Oya's family gathered to grieve once more. Her sister-in-law, Tina George-Hernandez, was Donald's mother.

Three mothers, three sons, three deaths, three weeks.

The war would not end.

A boy with a gun

Police found fistfuls of spent shell casings around Donald's body - 29 rounds from two types of guns. An autopsy revealed at least 10 gunshot wounds.

As morning came, police searched the neighborhood. At noon, they knocked on a door in the 3800 block of McKinley Avenue, a stone's throw from the 7-Eleven where Daquan Stallworth had been shot three weeks earlier.

A boy, 14, 15 answered the door. He was no stranger to police. Less than three months earlier, he had been sentenced to juvenile detention for violating terms of probation stemming from a car theft.

Police believed the boy, who had NGC connections, might know something about Donald George-Oya. They thought Donald might have left the boy's house just before the shooting.

Searching the boy's bedroom, police found a handgun - a probation violation, and cause for an arrest. The boy admitted the gun was his, according to a police report. He said he bought it for $120 from someone he wouldn't name.

He knew it worked, he said. To make sure, he had fired a test round into his math book.

The funeral

On Jan. 11, during Donald George-Oya's memorial service in Puyallup, five police cars openly guarded the streets around the funeral home, windshield wipers thumping. Family members huddled under the dripping eaves and smoked. Silk-screened copies of Donald's face smiled from their T-shirts.

Dale H. Oya - Donald's father, Joseph Dillon's uncle - clambered out of a car, brushed back strands of shoulder-length black hair and lit a cigarette.

He'd seen his nephew shot and killed. His son was dead. Yes, he said, the police cars made sense. Other young men in this family were still alive.

"There might be some people after these boys," he said.

At the moment of blessing two days later, the family gathered under umbrellas near the shabby East Side alley where Donald died.

The crowd approached 40. A group of tough-looking youths gathered at the fringes, shifting their feet in the drizzle.

Ron Vignec, standing in the center with the Rev. David Alger of Associated Ministries, began to speak.

"We want this space, this earth where Donald was killed, to be reclaimed," he said. Prayers followed. The clergymen sprinkled water over the ground, and waved sprigs of cedar. The family posted a small wooden sign with Donald's picture. Soon, flowers surrounded it.

Vignec asked whether anyone wanted to share thoughts about Donald.

Rain fell. A baby fussed.

"Silence, of course, is powerful in itself," Vignec said.

The tough boys in the back rocked back and forth. One stepped forward and chanted a native song.

The moment was over. The crowd dissolved, but Ranae Oya and Tina, Donald's mother, lingered. Someone, one of the kids, picked up something from the ground and handed it to Tina - a piece of torn, stained fabric. A piece of Donald's shirt.

She clutched it.

"It's got to stop," she said.

One of Donald's sisters, Madena Oya, 24, stood in the rain, looking at the chewed grass. Her two small children toddled in circles.

She used to run with the gangs, she said. Then she realized she was hurting her family and herself. She thought the streets loved her, she said, then realized she was wrong. Donald didn't live long enough to understand.

"He's in a better place now," she said. "It seems to me like we're in hell."

The wannabe

Following Donald's death, police cast their nets around gangsters connected to the war. Tony "Nuke" Batiste, one of the Pirus involved in the 7-Eleven shooting, was charged with gun possession and sentenced to 27 days in juvenile detention.

On Jan. 10, police arrested Dominique Stallworth, Daquan's brother, for gun possession. With him was a new face in the war, a 14-year-old girl with no prior record.

The pair said they were driving to the hospital to check on the condition of Daquan Stallworth. Police noticed the girl's tattoos - "CK," for "Crip Killer," and "44 ESP," declaring her Piru affiliation. 16

When police asked her about the handgun they found in the car, the girl said it was hers. She carried it for protection from the NGCs, she said.

A few days later in Pierce County Juvenile Court, the girl sat quietly as a judge gave her a stern stare and ordered her into electronic home monitoring.

"Make sure when you're out you're going to school and making your best effort there," the judge said. The girl nodded. Her mother watched and listened.

Outside the courtroom, the mother said her daughter took the gun charge as a matter of loyalty to the gang.

"That's the way these people do it," she said. "The youngest one gets the charge."

Until her daughter's arrest, the mother knew nothing of gangs, she said. She has learned a great deal since - her daughter was on the outskirts, a wannabe.

She told her mother she wanted to get out of the life. Police, prosecutors and counselors told the mother her daughter could be a target. She believes she's been followed by cars her daughter claims to recognize.

"I was sort of aware, but I didn't realize," the mother said. "I knew she was hanging around these people, I knew they had a car - but guns? I thought it was just a little clique or something, as opposed to guns, murder."

Murder charges

In late January, detectives charged five Pirus with the murder of Joseph Dillon.

The oldest, George Pender, was 21. Another was Joe Pesefea, 16. The others: Matthew James Murphy, 17, and Yuri V. Dobrogorskiy, 17. The youngest, Billy Jake Fryberg, was 15.

The charges against the five allege Pender and Fryberg fired the shots. Pender admitted it, and Dobrogorskiy supported the story. He said someone in the car offered him earplugs just before the shooting started. The trial is set for Sept. 12. The defendants entered not guilty pleas.

Police think Fryberg fired the killing shot - court documents show he admitted firing three shots at the house on East L Street. He said he wasn't trying to hit anyone.

Apart from Dobrogorskiy, all the defendants had juvenile records, and probation terms that prohibited gun possession. Prosecutors plan to try the four juveniles as adults.

Ranae Oya carried portraits to court for the arraignments. One was a photo of her son, Joseph, the other of her nephew, Donald.

She knew some of the boys charged with killing her son. Pender had played basketball with her sons when the family lived in East Tacoma, and the Murphys had been distant neighbors.

The Frybergs were closer. Their boys used to come over when they were hungry.

"They used to be our neighbor in the back," Ranae Oya says. "If they didn't have food, my kids would give them food."

Father and son

Oct. 18, 2004, 9:30 p.m.: Byron Fryberg, 45, father of Billy Fryberg, is rolling toward a showdown with thieves suspected of robbing a friend's house.

With him in the car is another son, Victor-Julian Turner, 22, and two other young men. Police see the vehicle weaving in and out of East Side traffic, and pull it over.

Turner tells the cops he's a Piru, and says the group armed itself after shooting broke out during a fight with rivals at McKinley Park. They were searching for the group and planning to "take care of business."

The officers search for weapons, and find two - a loaded .45 and an SKS assault rifle with three 30-round clips.

Fryberg tells a similar story, but denies knowledge of the assault rifle. He is arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit assault, among other offenses. He pleads guilty, and is sentenced to three months in jail.

His son, Victor, is convicted on the same charge. The sentence, combined with other offenses, sends him to prison for a year and a day.

A walking motive

Daquan Stallworth spent late January and February on the run.

After a long stay in the hospital, he had been recuperating at his grandfather's house. He sneaked out while the older man slept. His surgical stitches weren't completely healed. For days, he was on his own. 17

Sick and infected, he showed up at a hospital in the second week of February for a few days of treatment, then ran away again. Doctors told Tamika Foley her son was ill - blood pressure too high, wounds festering.

He was a victim, a witness and a walking motive. Police caught up with him in March, and placed him in custody on an outstanding warrant. Unofficially, they hoped to protect him.

The News Tribune requested an interview with Stallworth. Pierce County court leaders refused to grant the request, citing the sensitivity of the pending cases, and his juvenile status.

While in custody, Stallworth called his old mentor, Lawrence Stone.

"I flat out told him, 'You know there's a strong possibility that you can get killed,' " Stone said. "He said, 'Oh, I already know.' He's been shot at twice. I said, 'They're not gonna stop until they're finished.'

"When he ran away from his grandfather's house, he didn't have nowhere to go but to the gang," Stone said. "He said he wished he wouldn't have done it. He had told his own brother, man, you don't even want to be in this because it just - it ain't worth it."

Mothers and sons

In February, two mothers sent letters to two lost sons, posting them on Internet obituary guest books.

"Donald Baby," Tina George-Hernandez wrote, "I really miss you. I love you so much. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about you, and sometimes tears, sometimes smiles, but you are always with me. Love you Baby, Mom."

Ranae Oya was next.

"Joseph, time sure has gone by and I miss you so much," she wrote. "It's been 66 days since you went to the other side. I'm trying to let you go, but it's hard, son. Love, Mom."

The message

Police arrested two men in February. Prosecutors charged them with gun possession. The combined bail was $150,000, a number reflecting the defendants' roles in a murder investigation - the shooting of Donald George-Oya.

Deputy prosecutor Gerry Costello believes one of them was the smiling shooter, the one who chased Donald down and fired 13 shots. 18

The investigation, still active, includes a search warrant affidavit filed by detectives, seeking access to cell phone records. The search followed a tip from a gangster, a native youth, a cousin of Donald George-Oya.

The boy told police he'd been getting phone calls from the Pirus. The message was always the same: "You're next."

Sean Robinson: 253-597-8486 sean.robinson@thenewstribune.com

Sources

• 1. Source: Court documents. Police recovered five shell casings from the scene. Witnesses said the gangsters were shooting at the sky, then exchanging fire with each other.
• 2. Source: Multiple court documents. The drivers switched cars within moments of the shooting. Puyallup Tribal Police found them a few minutes later in a different car, and the accounts from participants confirmed the switch.
• 3. Power has not been arrested or charged in connection with these incidents, though he is named as a participant.
• 4. Court records list Tamika's birthdate as May 12, 1976. Court records list her son Dominique's birthdate as May 7, 1989.
• 5. Source: News Tribune archives. A story about Lawrence Stone and his gang intervention program appeared in 2003. A story about the Maxine Mimms Academy appeared in 2004. Coincidentally, Daquan Stallworth was featured in both.
• 6. Court documents suggest Batiste and Power lied about their whereabouts at the time of the shooting, saying they had been called or picked up afterwards. But Dominique and Daquan Stallworth later gave the description that appears in this story. Dominique told the story twice, once at the hospital. Daquan told the story after he recovered from surgery. Also, police recovered the red Fiesta with bullet holes and confirmed that Power's mother owned it.
• 7. Juvenile court records include an reference to Dennis Stallworth's refusal to let Daquan stay in his house. Later, the grandfather relented.
• 8. Source: Pierce County Juvenile Court records.
• 9. Source: Interview with Dale H. Oya
• 10. There are at least three Dale Oyas: Dale Harvey Oya, the uncle mentioned here; Dale Harvey Oya II, his son; and Dale A. Oya, son of Ranae Oya.
• 11. This statement appeared in charging papers related to the Dillon shooting, filed two months later.
• 12. Why was Joseph sitting in the house on East L Street, at 2 a.m., when Donald George-Oya was living there? Asked about this, Ranae Oya said Joseph was 22, an adult, free to go where he pleased.
He wasn't staying with strangers. It was his uncle's house. Donald was Joseph's younger cousin. They were family.
Oya said Joseph called her that night, asking to be picked up. He offered to walk down to her work, but she told him no, thinking she didn't want him walking the East Side streets at that time of night. An hour after Joseph's call, Tacoma Police called Ranae to tell her Joseph had been shot.
Ranae said she heard rumors that some of the gangsters expressed regret for Dillon's shooting, The claim is pure gossip, impossible to verify.
• 13. Tamika Foley described this and other conversations with her son.
• 14. Source: Pierce County court records.
• 15. Source: Pierce County Juvenile Court records.
• 16. Source: Pierce County Juvenile Court records.
• 17. Sources: Tamika Foley and Lawrence Stone.
• 18. A Feb. 15 search warrant affidavit filed by Tacoma Police describes a confession identifying the suspected shooter. Costello also offered statements in open court identifying the suspect.