The mothers of Fernando Corea Jr. and Quindel Francis are both in tears. Another sad Bronx tale that you probably won’t see made into a movie.
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Quindel Francis, a 21-year-old Bronx man who spent the last five years in jail on charges of murdering a classmate, was convicted of manslaughter on Friday, bringing an end to a legal saga that had stretched through two mistrials.
A Bronx jury cleared Mr. Francis of second-degree murder, the most serious charge, but still held him responsible for the 2005 slaying of Fernando Corea Jr., a high school football star. He faces up to 32 years in jail on both charges. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 17.
Both Mr. Francis and Mr. Corea were 16 years old when Mr. Corea was shot to death on Feb. 11, 2005.
“It’s your fault!” Mr. Francis’s mother and other supporters shouted at The Corea family as they left the courtroom moments later. “It’s because of you!”
The angry scene capped an emotional afternoon in the Bronx courthouse that left the mothers of Mr. Francis and Mr. Corea weeping on opposite sides of the gallery. Each had family member comforting her, but the sobs threatened to drown out the judge’s words.
Mr. Francis never denied that Mr. Corea was shot with his gun. In an interrogation video recorded the day after the shooting, he claimed that he confronted Mr. Corea in the Throgs Neck neighborhood where they both lived, and Mr. Corea swung a metal rod at him. He said that when he ducked, his gun fell out of his waistband and discharged. He said he picked up the gun, but fumbled it, and it went off several more times.
As the court room cleared, the victim’s parents hugged tightly, and cried on each other’s shoulders. The long-awaited verdict brought tremendous relief, said Evelyn Ortiz, Mr. Corea’s mother.
“They made justice,” she said. “Now my son is free.”
By SAM DOLNICK for The New York Times
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Now, another two women join the ever-growing list of mothers with lost sons. The tragedy of our young black and brown boys killing each other over senseless beefs and a warped version of respect.
Our fight to end this senselessness continues.
This resonates the perversion of life that our children have embraced.Kill or be killed.It has become the acceptable way to resolve our differences or worst yet the INDIFFERENCE of life itself.We have separated ourselves what differentiates us from animals.Animals kill to eat,to protect their young or protect their territories.Humans kill for sport and now children of color are creating a genocide among themselves by killing each other for the most inane reasons, and don't care about the consequences to anybody including themselves.If that isn't perverse thinking I don't know what is!! We as a people of color are in trouble and we should be deeply troubled.This is getting worse not better. We have professional athletes perpetrating this insanity in their own lives and be damned about the responsibility and accountability about having misplaced and misguided behavior.We have to try to renew the thinking of our youth by being the proper examples in our families and in our walk in life, we can start there because there is where the hope lies.If not the future isn't only bleak it's............
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