I was sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store on campus and 2 guys got shot on the side of a street. One guy ran up to us bleeding and holding his arm telling us to call 911. The other guy is still in his car getting photographed, measured and dusted for prints before they put him in a bodybag.

My day was starting to look better, since i got through the hardest day of school ive had in a long time, and a really hard day at work (i sold $3000 worth of turkeys on my register alone), but i was feeling allright, and now this is the most fucked up shit to happen to me in a long time.

Last year was 24, but this isnt the kind of thing that people associate with the campuses or the east side.

BTW - $3,000 worth of turkeys on your register alone? People stocking up for Christmas is a

BIG

Im still pretty shaken up, but i sold $6000 worth of groceries today. not bad. I ended up going out with a girl before work and another girl after, so im feeling a little better about my life in general (even before all this craziness, ive been having some bad mood swings and fighting the onset of holiday depression). The store detectives at my work are all Providence Police detectives who moonlight watching for shoplifters and helping us empty the safe at close, and i got to tell all of them my story. One of the detectives talked to me for quite a while about it, since he is in homicide (he said it was luck of the draw that he wasnt made primary on the case) He also told me they picked up the shooter today, and found the gun. The PD hasnt called me back even though i gave them my number, but they probably have enough evidence based on the man who survived was right there when it happened and knows a lot more than i do.

One of the supervisors at work who is more street smart than me said i shouldnt have given them my phone number or let myself be seen on the news (of which i did both) since last year, there were almost half a dozen homicides based around a single gang-related case where witnesses were targeted. Oh well.. i guess i just thought it was the right thing to do. And that case was on the other side of Hope Street anyway, where this is more common

Heres the text from the article i just read.. it actually sheds some light for me as to what happened. Its patently incorrect though, because the shooter did not run up Euclid towards Thayer.. thats where i was and i think i would have noticed a trenchcoat, eyepatch and shotgun go by, and so would the victim who had already run across that street. As I discussed it with Det. Allen, it seems more likely the shooter ran behind the block i was on and approached the Shell station from the other side. Also, it wasnt one shot that went through both. It was two shots, I heard both of them. The man i saw had an entrance and exit wound, but i think that the shot that got the man in the car was the second one, not the one that went through the other guy. Someone else also told me the shooter actually dropped his ID at the Shell and thats why he turned himself in. Smart.

quote:

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11.22.2001 00:05
Man sought in murder turns himself in
• Alex A. "Bam" Snow is accused of killing Luiz Gomez, who was fatally shot Tuesday night on College Hill.

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The man accused of killing one man and wounding another during a drug deal gone bad turned himself in to the police yesterday.

Alex A. "Bam" Snow, 37, is expected to be arraigned today in connection with the murder of Luis Gomez on College Hill.

Just before midnight Tuesday, the police said, on a street where residents and Brown University students live, Snow allegedly shot the 27-year-old man and his 31-year-old cousin, Guillermo Gomez, as they sat in a BMW outside 14 Euclid St.

The shot tore through Guillermo Gomez's arm and struck Luis Gomez's head, killing him, said Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. Snow fled toward the College Hill Book Store, on Thayer Street, according to police reports.

The police found the Remington pump shotgun on Brown Street early yesterday morning, Cianci said. But they already knew who they were looking for. Guillermo Gomez told the police that the gunman was Snow, according to police reports.

During a news conference at City Hall yesterday, Cianci refused to say why the men were on Euclid Street or why Snow allegedly shot the Gomez cousins. The matter is still under investigation, he said.

Maj. Martin F. Hames and Lt. Steve Campbell, the two top detectives investigating the murder, stood silently beside the mayor during the news conference.

"This was not an act of random violence. The suspects and victims all knew each other," Cianci said.

Snow was a boxer and a football player at Cranston High School East, the police said, and then he gained a reputation as a local thug, even losing his left eye during a fight.

Snow is a large man with a long arrest record. He has served time in prison for robbery, possession of a firearm, and three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon -- one of which was reduced from a charge of intent to murder. His probation ended last year, according to the Department of Corrections.

Both Gomez men also have criminal records that include robberies and drug possession charges. Cianci said the murder appeared to be a soured drug deal.

Gomez's murder is the 19th homicide in the city, and it occurred on the eve of the mayor's announcement that Providence was named in Money magazine's list this year of "Best Places to Live." The category is based on cost of living, air quality, graduation rates, unemployment -- and crime statistics.

Last year, there were 30 homicides in the city, with three of them occurring over the four-day Thanksgiving holiday.

Yesterday afternoon, Luis Gomez's family mourned inside their modest blue house on Gladstone Street in South Providence. Relatives were coming from the Dominican Republic for his funeral.

"We're sorry for the families," Cianci said yesterday. "And we're sorry for our city, especially on the heels of being rated one of the best cities in America."

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