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Murder victim Felton Glass called church-goer, gang wannabe

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Family, friends and community members have been outraged over the recent murder of 17-year-old Felton Glass, not only because he was shot in cold blood, but because authorities labeled Glass a member of the Eight Trey Gangsters Crips gang, a label that most say he didn’t deserve.

Cornell Ward, executive director of the Unity One Foundation, said, “My heart goes out to the family of Felton and my heart goes out to the babies that pulled the trigger. If anything, he was a wannabe, and wanting to be something can get you killed. My message is to stop perpetrating.

Stop trying to be something you are not. He was a church- going boy who loved God. He was in church every Sunday and always in choir rehearsal.”

“As I told the youth at church on Sunday,” Ward continued, “you can’t live a double life. What you do in the dark will come to the light. You have to be very cautious and careful about what you portray. There are so many babies getting killed out here.”

Ward identified a main part of the problem as the lack of any gang intervention program assigned to the area where Glass was killed–Manchester and Western avenues.

“The Eight Treys and the 90s are working to set up their own intervention program. The gangs themselves are trying to do it. They don’t want the killing; they want it to stop too,” said Ward.

According to LAPD Captain Dennis Kato, Ward is correct about the lack of gang intervention.

“Essentially from 79th Street up to near Century Boulevard, there is no gang prevention/intervention program in place,” said Kato. “The mayor’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development program has zones where they are heavily active, but their boundaries are at the beginning and the end of the 77th precinct’s coverage area. So, that whole middle corridor has nothing in place to help remedy the problem… Having a gang intervention program in place is really the one missing piece to the 77th,” he said.

The Unity One Foundation, which seeks to provide gang violence intervention and conflict mediation services to more than 150 individuals and families daily, was one of the many intervention groups whose funding was cut recently. Ward stated that the organization, which usually gets heavy support from the government, lost nearly two-thirds of its funding, making it more difficult to provide services to the community.

Glass is the last known victim killed in the back-and-forth, day-to-day shoot-out that terrorized the Manchester/Western corridor last week, and things appear to have calmed down.

With cooperation from the community, Glass’ alleged shooter, 18-year-old Eric Stefon Reed, was arrested shortly after the murder. He has been charged with murder and bail was set at $2 million. Reed, who is no stranger to the criminal justice system and had just been released from prison on Nov. 1, has a court date of Dec. 12.

In an effort to staunch the violence from happening in the future, Unity One will hold a cease-fire breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Dec. 10. The interventionist community will be able to come together to provide solutions on how to stop the killing. The breakfast will be held at the Church of Scientology on Vermont Avenue and 81st Street.

For more information on the breakfast, contact the organization at (323) 945-9243 or www.unityonefoundationinc.org.

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