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Article snippet: They came for the aging Bloods soldier a few minutes before midnight, bursting from the lobby of a housing project with a loaded 9-millimeter handgun. The first bullet probably killed him, but six more shots followed anyway. And then the assailants scurried off into the shadows. Six brass shells lay in a halo at Jequan Lawrence’s feet. Another rested beside his head: a point-blank shot at an already-dead man that would leave his face disfigured at an open-casket funeral. In a South Bronx neighborhood where violence is hardly rare, the brutality of the ambush gave even the most hardened residents and detectives pause. But it meant even more to Mr. Lawrence’s fellow Bloods. It disabused them of the notion, however naïve, that their gang’s red flag of loyalty prevented one Blood from killing another over a petty beef. The New York Times has documented every homicide last year in the 40th Precinct, a two-square-mile section of the South Bronx. The 14 killings that occurred amid the area’s housing projects and rolling parks represented the most intransigent forms of urban violence at a time of historically low crime: a machete murder by a schizophrenic man, two domestic homicides, orchestrated hits on drug dealers, a party out of control, bullets that killed women they weren’t meant for. Mr. Lawrence’s death was not the last, but it is the final one to be chronicled in this series. Detectives call the 31-year-old’s murder the darkest and most confusing killing on thos... Link to the full article to read more