Mother grieves death of her 4-year-old son

When the shots began, Stephanie Thompson ran around the corner to find a man firing in the middle of the street and her 4-year-old son, Brandon, running up the sidewalk toward her.

Thompson said the gunman, a 20-year-old she recognized from the neighborhood, looked her "dead in the face" before firing the shot that hit Brandon in the head.

"I watched my baby get shot," Thompson said yesterday. "I couldn't get to him fast enough."

Brandon died instantly, authorities said, in his mother's arms.

"He had blood coming from everywhere. I just held him and told him to get up, but he wouldn't get up," Thompson said. "He was only 4. And he was trying to run to his mommy."

Brandon became Camden's 36th and youngest homicide victim of the year.

Even in a city accustomed to violence, Monday's shoot-out - in the late afternoon after a beautiful summer day, on a street filled with children - seemed particularly brazen.

"I told my kids all my time: Keep your kids where you at," said Jacque Pierce, Thompson's mother. "My daughter lived there, so they figured they were safe. This is the worst area."

Authorities said at least two men opened fire on each other around 5:20 p.m. in Thompson's Whitman Park neighborhood, firing several dozen bullets.

Brandon was shot at the corner of Norris and Sheridan streets.

U.S. Marshals arrested one man yesterday - Donald Benjamin Lindsey, 20, of Camden - and authorities are looking for other shooters.

Investigators said the shooting was not drug related and Thompson's family was not involved in any dispute with the gunmen. Brandon simply ran into the cross fire, investigators said.

Thompson, though, said Lindsey took aim at her son and fired.

Thompson and others in the neighborhood said they recognized Lindsey because he had a child with a woman in the neighborhood.

"He just had an ignorant attitude but I never talked to him, I just knew him by seeing him," said Thompson. "I don't understand why he did what he did. He saw my son, I know he saw my son."

Thompson, 21, said she saw a man she thought was Lindsey on Sunday in the neighborhood carrying a "machine gun." Pierce said he was riding back and forth on a bicycle with a scarf covering his face.

Thompson said she called 911 on Sunday. Police came to the neighborhood, but didn't find anyone, she said.

On Monday, Lindsey returned to the neighborhood on a bicycle, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, police said.

Brandon, who had just awakened from a nap, was playing in front of his aunt's house with his cousins and little brother, 2-year-old Marquis, when the shooting started.

Other neighbors hurried to scoop up their children.

"Nobody slept last night. I know I didn't," said Rita, a neighbor who would only give her first name. "I lay there staring at my kids all damn night long. It's messed up to say, but I was just thankful I knew where everybody was and everybody was OK."

Pierce said her daughter never wanted to end up in Camden - Thompson could have earned a track and field scholarship, but had to give up the sport after giving birth to Brandon, Pierce said.

Pierce said her daughter worked at a Target in Delran.

"She didn't want to be here from the beginning but she didn't have a choice for her pocketbook," she said.

She said her grandson had a promising future.

"He was smart, special, 4. He deserved much more," Pierce said. "Who ever thought about a funeral service for a 4-year-old? We're lost at this point."