
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 30, 1990                   TAG: 9007300244
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: LARRY NEUMEISTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

PROJECT CHILDREN PLAY GRIM GAMES

At a housing project where gunfire, drug dealers and murders are commonplace, children play a spooky game of "crime scene" the way other youngsters play house.

They mimic shootouts, play dead and act out the role of detectives cordoning off an area with tape or examining a victim. They swap stories of those they know who "got taken out of here."

At the Walt Whitman and Ingersoll housing project, the game became real for a 3-year-old who was sleeping on a sofa bed in his family's apartment when he was shot to death.

Ben Williams was hit in the head by a bullet fired through the front door. He was the third child reported killed by a stray bullet in New York City in a week.

Outsiders should "put themselves in our shoes for 10 minutes," said Zuleka Pass, one of 30,000 people living in Brooklyn's Fort Greene project. "They should know how it feels to watch your children's pencils shake when they try to do their homework with the sound of gunshots outside," she said.

Pass said the killing exposed the fear that residents feel every day. "When I hear a shot go off right away we roll onto the floor," she said. "You never know when it's going to come into your house. Those stray bullets have no name."

After 4-year-old Dazmaine Russ was shot in the head by a stray bullet while playing outside in 1988, children re-created the shooting, Pass recalled. One child pretended to fire a weapon and another child fell, she said.

Dazmaine, caught in crossfire between drug dealers, now limps around the project's grounds. He underwent two months of plastic surgery for his head wound. His right hand no longer functions.

Police say the shooting of 3-year-old Ben may have occurred several hours after his half-brother had an argument behind the building where the family lived.

Pass said many of the project's youths consider jail and handcuffs a badge of honor that will earn respect from their peers so no one bothers them.

As for weapons, Pass' 18-year-old daughter, Aisha, said most youths aren't afraid to use them because they're not afraid to die.

"It's not like they would die for a cause or something like that," she said. "They'd die over where they sell drugs, over money, over people looking at them the wrong way."

by CNB