YONG KIM / Staff photographer
Roma Hough, whose daughter was allegedly raped by a neighbor, is flanked by her brother, Antwione , and sister Tatica.
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Vigilante justice has a price
E ARLIER THIS MONTH, a Kensington mob pummeled and held Jose Carrasquillo, who police accused of raping an 11-year-old girl on her way to school.
Meanwhile, in another case last year, Antwione Hough and his relatives beat and held a man accused of raping and impregnating his 14-year-old niece.
In the Kensington case, two men from that mob split an $11,500 reward for what police lauded as community justice.
Hough essentially did the same thing as the two men, but he was charged with a series of felonies and has spent more than $10,000 on bail and court fees.
The difference in the handling of two cases in which people took the law into their hands has left those familiar with Hough's plight asking the obvious: Why?
"Where's the justice my son gets for protecting his own?" asked Hough's mother, Roma McCain, 52.
"I wasn't running around like a cowboy," said Hough, 38. "This is my niece. She's like a daughter to me. Seeing someone else rewarded for what I did . . . these guys were caught on tape beating this guy up."
The District Attorney's Office, which approved charges against Hough, declined to comment.
However, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey acknowledged citizen justice can often be a murky issue.
"I think you have to look at what's reasonable in terms of actions taken by members of the public," Ramsey said.
"If an individual is wanted by the police for a felony, and you restrain him, how much force is too much? Every case is different."
Suffering in silence
Hough says his niece hasn't been the same since the rape last July.
It was a breezy afternoon. Relatives milled around inside the house on Godfrey Avenue near Rising Sun in Lawndale, while the teenager sat on the front steps playing, said the girl's mother, Roma "Mimi" Hough, 33.
Next door, Emmanuel Figue-roa, 24, emerged from the house and told the teen that his girlfriend's daughter wanted to play with her inside, Mimi Hough said.
The girl went in, but there was no one else inside. In the living room, Figueroa told her how beautiful she was and, Hough said, began to take her pants off. She tried to fight him off, but he threw her onto the couch and raped her, Hough said.
He warned her not to tell anyone and she ran out of the house, Hough said. Weeks went by and the teen told no one of the attack.
But about four months later, during a class field trip, she fainted and was rushed to a hospital, where it was revealed that she was pregnant.
Family members were stunned.
"She's not one of those fast girls," said the victim's grandmother Roma McCain, of South Jersey. "She is so sheltered."
