Jim Schoettler in Jacksonville: Carlos Clemons dove to the floor of his friend’s Jacksonville home as 30 blasts from two assault rifles ripped through windows, walls, doors and bodies.
The attackers vanished in their white pickup as Clemons looked up to see his baby brother slumped in a chair. Bryan Clemons, 23, never had the chance to duck.
Clemons, 29, stared into his brother’s lifeless eyes, screamed for help and carried him outside as an ambulance raced toward them. Death won out in Grand Park that night in April 2009.
A target and triggerman himself, Carlos Clemons lost a brother five months earlier during a two-year stretch of violence that also claimed an uncle and several friends.
As in many of those cases — some solved, most not — the people involved knew each other well in the same working-class neighborhood.
Killers and victims once played together on youth sports teams, prayed together in Bible study and had sleepovers where their only competition involved video games and backyard hoops.
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