New Haven shooting victim says will to change outcome for others outpaces bitterness

NEW HAVEN >> It’s around 6 on a Friday night and 36-year-old Yancey Horton, or “Brother Born,” as he is known in the community, is busy banging out a dozen pull-ups at the Lincoln-Bassett School playground.

Unlike most people, Horton is doing pull-ups while he is strapped into a wheelchair.

Horton was shot about eight years ago during an attempted robbery; he has a mental block when it comes to the exact date. He was walking home after work and made a stop at a Willis Street corner store. He was approached by a number of masked people and was shot twice.

Horton and Richardson talked about how they hope the proposed African community center would help build entrepreneurial spirit in the black community and lead the area to producing its own consumer goods instead of buying them elsewhere.

Both said how much they detest the shooting range at the police academy on Sherman Parkway. The location is in proximity to a number of schools.

“If you live here you are going to hear more gunshots than someone who has been to Vietnam or Iraq,” Horton said.

Both Horton and Richardson said the constant sound of gunshots desensitizes people in the neighborhood.

“In (neighbors’) minds, they are practicing on shooting me,” Richardson said. “Then you start to think, ‘my life isn’t worth that much.’”

It may be that he is a cop or emergency room physician who is long since used to hearing vague tales about “some dude” or “a couple of dudes” who attacked an individual while he was “minding my own business, I didn’t do nothing, man!” And some time later the real story comes out.

It’s possible that this case may be a true random attack. However, the reality in some neighborhoods very often is that 90% or more of those shot were asking for it in some manner, and would have done so themselves if they had gotten the drop on their attackers. Most often, such disputes center on the local monopoly on drug sales and other crimes. Gangsters shooting each other remove a great plague from the rest of us.

I think this good-riddance factor explains the curious phenomenon of our murder rate being so high compared to Europe, but our rate of other serious crime so much lower. A criminal in England, say, might well enjoy a long, productive career preying on his neighbors, with little fear of armed resistance from his victims or competitors. In the US, he will often be shot and killed or crippled by a homeowner or another crook before he is much out of his teens or early twenties, cutting short what would have been a long and violent criminal career.

It may well be that he was not engaged in any illegal or threatening activity at the time, and that his shooting was therefore unlawful; but that does not change the fact that his removal from the community may be an unalloyed blessing to his neighbors. And please note, I am speaking hypothetically and statistically here. It may be that the man in this story is truly innocent and truly a pillar of his community, and if so his injury is much to be regretted. But chances are quite high that this is not the case.

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