Retrial starts in Bloods gang shooting

An anguished Shelly Scott moved from her five-bedroom house in Willingboro days after a carload of Bloods gang members rolled up there and shot her two sons, killing one.

She remarried the boys' father, whom she had divorced 15 years earlier. Tragedy, she explained recently, has a way of bringing people together.

Yet what truly changed her - shook her almost as much as the death of her son LaVonne Adkins on Feb. 15, 2006 - occurred when his alleged murderers came to trial.

Everything Scott thought she knew about her son was tested as she faced unsettling questions on the witness stand and heard testimony by street gang members who called the 18-year-old one of their own.

His death, they said, was part of a "spring cleaning" of problem members.

"Do you know if he had any affiliation with the Bloods?" a prosecutor asked Scott, who was anxious to dispute the characterization.

"No," she replied, even now in disbelief.

Scott is steeling herself for another trial that begins this week in Burlington County after the first ended in a mistrial last June when an unidentified person tried to intimidate a juror.

For the 42-year-old mother, the trial is an unwanted view into the operations of the Bloods gang that is spilling from New Jersey's cities into its suburbs.

It is a ritual-bound culture, where rank matters and those who disobey the code are punished with timed 31-second beatings.

And, if prosecutors and some witnesses are to be believed, it is a world in which skipping gang meetings was enough to get LaVonne Adkins marked as "food," deserving of execution.

On trial are Tarell "Trigger" Ambrose and Shawn "Shorty Roc" Cook, both 26. The state's case against the men, both from Camden, relies largely on six fellow Bloods who will testify as part of plea agreements that will reduce their sentences to between five and 10 years.

In February, Nina Sheppard - Ambrose's girlfriend at the time of the ambush and a defendant in the last trial - pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and will testify in exchange for a five-year sentence.

Besides murder, Ambrose and Cook are charged with attempting to kill LaVonne Adkins' brother Eric, then 19.

They also are charged with trying to murder fellow gang member Maurice Brown, now 20, later that same night in Camden. Brown, of Mount Laurel, allegedly drove a getaway car from the Adkins' shootings.

Another defendant, Joseph "G.I." Townsend, a friend of LaVonne Adkins' since middle school who was 17, will be tried separately as an adult for his alleged participation in the shootings.

Defense attorneys have argued that statements from the gang witnesses are inconsistent and that no physical evidence links Ambrose and Cook to the shootings. The witnesses, they said, bent the truth in return for their reduced sentences.

Jury selection is to begin tomorrow in Burlington County Superior Court. In a rare move, the jury will be anonymous, meaning the names of those selected will be withheld. The panelists will be escorted in the courthouse at all times.

"To the best of anyone's recollection here, this is a first," Winnie Comfort, spokeswoman for the state courts, said.

New Jersey towns report the presence of Bloods more often than any other street gang, and Burlington County is squeezed between two of the state's three Bloods clusters, Trenton and Camden, according to a 2007 state report. Willingboro was estimated to have more than 200 Bloods at the time.

Prosecutors say Ambrose - reputedly a "four-star general" of Camden's G-Shine set of the Bloods - directed the hits on LaVonne Adkins and Brown while in Camden County Jail. They say Sheppard, 28, was the go-between.

Known as Reckless and Miss General and said to be a high-ranking Blood herself, Sheppard affirmed in court two months ago that Ambrose gave her the OK the day before the attacks. She said she relayed the message to Cook and Townsend. Eric Adkins was not meant to be a target.

In the year before he died, Shelly Scott said, LaVonne Adkins was a young adult who chafed at the rules his mother imposed. He questioned his curfew and defended his friends after Scott made clear that she distrusted Townsend.

In the fall of 2005, LaVonne Adkins left home for a month and took off with his childhood friend, she said. He apologized when he returned, but he never explained where he went.

After that, he was respectful, she said, and he seemed happy. He took courses at Burlington Community College and worked at Target and delivering pizzas. He was hoping to join a national job-training program.

Prosecutors say that on the night of Feb. 15, 2006, the Adkins brothers were on their front porch when Cook and Townsend approached by foot packing a .357 Magnum revolver and a shotgun, as a car full of Bloods waited nearby. They allegedly began shooting as LaVonne and Eric Adkins tried to run inside.

Scott rushed into the living room to discover LaVonne Adkins lying facedown near the doorway. She stepped over him to reach Eric Adkins, who called out as he struggled to get up from the porch.

"Mom, we were shot," he said. "Call the police."

LaVonne Adkins died almost immediately. A registered nurse who had worked in trauma units, Scott remained by Eric Adkins' side for three weeks as he recuperated at Cooper University Hospital. His arm had been shattered, his lung and liver pierced by bullets.

When she broke the news of his brother's death, Eric Adkins, woozy from medication, was insistent. "No, he's not," he told her. "He's sitting in the corner. LaVonne, will you turn around and tell them you're here?"

Scott says that she found no signs of gang affiliation when she packed up LaVonne Adkins' things. She said she believed that the gang tried to entice LaVonne Adkins to join and went after him when he refused. Eric Adkins has not been accused of being a Blood.

Gang members testified that LaVonne Adkins, known to them as YB, had not lived up to his obligations as a Blood.

Ambrose had "seen that LaVonne is like a slacker - like, he wasn't holding up for the 'hood like he was supposed to," Brown said. "He kept missing meetings and stuff like that."

To avoid suspicion in the Adkins shootings, some of the alleged perpetrators masqueraded as grieving comrades in T-shirts that featured portraits of the brothers, according to testimony. But within days, they were picked up by the authorities.

Scott says she dreads this week, having to relive "the drama of the witnesses telling the jury how they sat down at a table and plotted out a plan to murder somebody's child. . . . To have to listen to something like that is just - it's hard."

Scott and Eric Adkins are expected to testify again.

After the trials are over, Scott wants to leave the area with Eric Adkins and her husband, Larry Adkins, 51, to start their lives over in a place where no one can pity or harm her. Now living in a three-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed place, she hopes someday to own a house again.

But LaVonne Adkins will always be a part of their lives. On Eric Adkins' 22d birthday in January - two days and a year apart from his little brother's - the family upheld its tradition of celebrating both birthdays at once.

They had the same cake as always - half vanilla for Eric, half chocolate for LaVonne.