Police say prep star killed because of long feud based on disrespect
That's what police say led to the shooting death of 18-year-old college football prospect Terrance Kelly last week in Richmond's Iron Triangle.
Last summer, Kelly played in a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Nevin Community Center. Detectives were tipped in recent days that a boy named Darren Ray Pratcher also played. Something passed between the two that Darren took to be disrespect.
A kernel of anger from that day nestled in Darren's 15-year-old mind may have provoked him to shoot Kelly dead on 7th Street last Thursday night, as the former De La Salle High School linebacker waited in front of a house for his stepbrother.
Police raided a Pennsylvania Street house on Saturday and arrested 18-year-old Larry Pratcher, Darren's brother, but did not find the boy who detectives suspect pulled the trigger.
With permission from a Contra Costa juvenile court judge, police released his name and picture to media, along with a $1 million arrest warrant on suspicion of murder.
"We believe both suspects actively participated in the killing," police Sgt. Enos Johnson said. "My understanding is that (Larry Pratcher and Kelly) were acquaintances — at one time they may have been friends."
Disrespect can kill in poor neighborhoods like the Iron Triangle, where many kids own little more than their own perceptions of who they are and their place in the world.
Last August two teenagers from different neighborhoods got into a fender-bender, then argued about whose fault it was, Johnson recalled.
That dispute touched off a weeks-long feud that terrorized Iron Triangle residents as carloads of young men periodically fired assault weapons at buildings, cars and other young men. At least three homicides were linked to the dispute and related retributory gunfire.
"You sit there and scratch your head and try to figure out how someone could do this. Just because someone dented your car, you'll take another human being's life," Johnson said. "All of these young men who are doing this, there has got to be a way to reach them."
Larry Pratcher now sits in the county jail in Martinez in lieu of $2 million bail, arrested on suspicion of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Detectives seek at least one more person whom they would not identify in connection with Kelly's killing, and have received some tips that Darren may have left the area.
Kelly and Larry Pratcher played on the same community basketball team a couple of years ago, Kelly's family members said Monday. Larry may have even spent the night at Kelly's grandmother's home, they said.
Basketball coaches for the Richmond Police Activities League recruited both boys to play in the league's 16-and-under division a couple years ago, Officer Larry Lewis said. He did not know whether they played on the same team.
Police said the Pratcher brothers hung around in the impoverished blocks near Fourth Street Park. Both Larry and Darren were near the house on the 300 block of 7th Street hours before Kelly was killed there, police said.
Nobody answered the door at the Pratcher home on Monday.
Kelly, 18, graduated from De La Salle High School in Concord this summer as one of the top athletes in the Spartans' vaunted football program, which has produced a national-record 151 straight wins.
The University of Oregon recruited him, awarding a full scholarship, Kelly intended to use to study business. He was due to join his team this week.
Instead, family and friends will attend his funeral Wednesday.
Monday they were numb.
"This family is really tight-knit and we talking the other day about how we never have had any real tragedies other than someone dying from natural causes," said 29-year-old Johnnie Dempsey, Kelly's cousin. "This has really hit close to home."
Dempsey now sports tattoos on his hands. On the right, the letter T. On the left, the letter K. Those are his cousin's initials.
A blue, late-model Ford Mustang sat in the driveway. The family planned to drive it to Eugene, Ore., in a few weeks for Kelly. His father already circled the dates of Oregon's home games on the calendar.
A block from where Kelly died the Rev. Andre Shumake walked past his neighborhood's civic heart: The Nevin Community Center.
Shuttered three months by city budget cuts, the Nevin Center's entrance stank of stale urine. A drift of trash and leaves blocked the door.
"There is no mentoring taking place, there is no tutoring going on at the community center. Our libraries are closed," said Shumake, president of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council. "Tell me why a 12-, 13-, 15-year-old kid has a gun in his hand when he should have a book in his hand?"
Shumake is weary of children's funerals. He called on city leaders to restore services that support them, and to find a way of easing the multi-generational economic blight that leads to joblessness and hopelessness in his neighborhood.
"Forgive me if I sound angry," said Shumake, an influential member of the West County faith community. "But it's time to stop all the rhetoric — our babies are being slaughtered in the streets of our city."