Via email, and by permission, from a homeless friend and reader. Email subject is “Gang Experiences:” Email has been edited slightly to maintain anonymity:
I have had no real run-ins with a gang unless you want to count that shooting episode from Friday night! [Editor's note: Several young men in a car drove by and shot at him with what he assumes was a BB gun as he was standing on a sidewalk near downtown. One pellet hit his lower leg but he was wearing work boots and was uninjured.]
But, [another homeless friend] has begun to carry a disassembled pool cue as a walking stick/defensive weapon lately. I remember just before he started carrying around that pool cue, that he told me of an encounter he had down S. Elm-Eugene St., presumably between Center of Hope and GUM. His story is that three young teen males tried to stop him and demand money, and so he picked up a stick and beat them away.
Another story comes from a creepy man I had an encounter with at 2:15 AM this morning [where he was sleeping.] He woke me up to “talk” to me and wound up asking me for cigarettes, money, and even my water bottle, which I gladly gave up to him in the hopes he would leave me alone. He claimed to be homeless-working because his female companion left him. He stated that he is new to Greensboro and was walking along Benbow Rd. and was robbed at gunpoint of $400 cash by some teen gang members. He kept turning his conversation back to money so I gave up after 20 minutes and left [the area] out of concern for my own safety. I hardly spoke to him, and he had so much to say that I was not about to remain there alone with him. Somehow all the other homeless had left [the area] and it appeared we were the only ones there.
Update: I mentioned this email to a cop friend. His take: “I wouldn’t assume it’s all gang-related, but it’s still young people.” True. Young people — in a gang or not — shooting BB guns at homeless people, attacking homeless people, robbing homeless people = not good news.
And p.s., that’s why I ended the title of the post with a question mark. Some of this is probably gang-related, some of it may not be. The email writer was clear in a conversation with me that he doesn’t know if the young men who shot at him were part of a gang or just kids goofing off. Either way, it’s disturbing.
