Stop Snitchin’

The 31-year-old mother of four clutches a portrait of her daughters, rubbing her finger over the smiling face in the center. "2007 was a horrible, horrible year," she says.

Before Sandra can talk about the worst night of her life, she needs to hold back her tears with good memories. When her daughter Shawrica was a child, she couldn't dance. Instead, she would wiggle around like a trout flopping on a bank. "We called her Tuna," Lester says. "My dad named her that."

Though she raised Shawrica in some of Akron's toughest neighborhoods, where drug dealers rule the playgrounds and prostitutes dot the streets, her daughter never strayed. "I ran a dictatorship," says Mom.

Even at 18, Shawrica wasn't into boys. She was a good student and had a job at McDonald's in Merriman Valley. She was a churchgoing girl, thanks to her grandfather, a minister at Akron Bible Church. And though Shawrica was a beanstalk, her dream was to open a clothing store for plus-size women after graduating from Akron Digital Academy. "She knew how hard it was for me to find clothes," Sandra says. "And she just wanted a place where big women could go to feel good. That's how she was, always thinking of other people."

Sandra shakes her head before lighting a cigarette. "But now I'm left here to see how people don't care."

She was introduced to this notion on January 26, 2007. Sandra had just gotten out of night classes at the University of Akron, where she was studying sociology. Too tired to make dinner, she decided to pick up food at The Wing House. As she stood in line, her cell phone rang.

"Tuna's been ran over," said the caller before they were cut off.

Then came another call: "Tuna's been shot!" the caller screamed. "You gotta get to the hospital!"

Doctors delivered the horrible news as soon as she walked into the emergency room: Shawrica had been shot twice outside The Cage, a dance club for teens on Akron's east side. She was dead.

"I just fell to the floor," Sandra says. "I didn't even ask who did it. I didn't care. I just lost it. I was like a zombie."

A week later, more than 1,000 people attended Shawrica's funeral at Macedonia Baptist Church, three blocks from where she was killed. Many of them had never met Shawrica, only hearing of the tragedy through the news.

Young men sported fresh "R.I.P Shawrica" tattoos, while others wore T-shirts emblazoned with her image. They laid teddy bears and flowers at her coffin, offering Sandra their grief and condolences. "Tuna's death really opened a door for people," she says. "People realized we need to change. People went to counseling. They were getting tattoos. There were all these angry young men I had to speak to."

But that's when the sympathy ended.

More than 200 people were there the night Shawrica was murdered. Police are certain they know who did it. But thanks to threats from the gang responsible, nearly every witness has refused to testify.

It's called the no-snitching rule. And in the Manchester-Thornton neighborhood of Akron, it is the highest rule of law.

Sandra had never heard of The Cage before that night she crumpled in the hospital hallway. Neither had Akron police.

The club, housed on East Market Street, opened just three weeks earlier, thanks to James "Cage" Smith, who hoped to cash in on the city's lack of underage venues by offering a place for kids to mingle and dance, a place where they could feel like grown-ups.

Smith charged $10 a head and pulled in over 300 people on Friday nights, drawing bored teens from as far away as Bath. A sign on the now-shuttered door still reads, "If you leave The Cage, you must pay to re-enter."

Since he didn't serve alcohol, Smith didn't need any special permits or licenses. Nor was he required to hire security or even notify the city of the club's existence. It was, in effect, the ideal hangout for teenage gangbangers.

"There is no place where kids 14 or 15 can get in," says Akron Police Sergeant Mike Zimmerman, who runs the department's Gang Unit. "So places like this draw huge numbers, and it's the perfect gangster hangout, where they can mix in, meet up, and build a rep."

Sixteen-year-old Tyree Feaster was at The Cage with his crew that night. A high-school dropout who goes by the name Baby Chewz, Feaster had followed his brother Garrick's footsteps into the V-Not gang, which laid claim to Manchester-Thornton.

Thirty years before, the neighborhood had been home to a sturdy population of rubber workers. But over subsequent years, its once tidy homes were rendered a ghetto ruled by slumlords, who'll rent to anyone who can make the monthly payment.

For over a decade, V-Not — "Valley Niggas on Top" — had slung dope on its corners, taken over vacant homes as hangouts, and handed down beatings to those who spoke against them. To make sure residents remained in line, they'd make frequent visits to bus stops, intimidating the elderly into coughing up a "hood tax."

Like most gangs in the Rust Belt's smaller cities, Akron's aren't the kind of highly organized consortiums that have dominant leaders and complex drug networks. Instead, they're little more than loose-knit crews of knuckleheads — high-school dropouts beating defenseless drunks on their way home from the bar.

Still, their bullets hurt just as much as those in Philly or D.C. "A lot of people here think, 'This is Akron — we don't have a gang problem here,'" Zimmerman says. "Oh yes, we do. I deal with it."

Since 1999, when Ohio passed its anti-gang law, Akron has knocked out over 100 convictions for gang activity. Members are usually picked up for trafficking, break-ins, and assault, and V-Not dominates that list.

As 200 kids danced to Yung Joc and Juelz Santana at The Cage that night, Feaster and his crew surveyed the room for rivals — namely the Hilltoppers, who claim the string of barbershops, liquor stores, and barbecue joints along Copley Road as their home.

For months, the two groups had been feuding. They'd meet at parties and high-school basketball games to throw up gang signs, fight, and occasionally start shooting.

"They usually just shoot each other in the legs," Zimmerman says. "We don't know why they have a beef. They just do. It's a territory thing, most likely."

That night at The Cage, each gang made it clear through pubescent bravado that if the other didn't step off, there would be trouble. And there was.

As people began to throw punches, the room turned into chaos. The owners intervened and kicked everyone out.

Kids flooded into the parking lot. More fights erupted. As the Hilltoppers whaled on V-Not, Feaster and his guys knew it was time to make one thing clear — no one fucks with the Valley.

A V-Not associate would later testify that Feaster and at least two other V-Nots ran to the dumpster, where they'd hidden their guns. Shots rang out. Kids ran for cover.

After firing at least 15 rounds into the crowd, according to court records, Feaster and his guys ran across the street to the Board of Education parking lot. Among them was Earl Davis, a lanky 15-year-old, who seemed to equate blasting away at an innocent crowd with manhood. "You can't say I don't bust," Davis said before slipping his gun into his pants, according to court records.

As sirens wailed in the background, Davis' uncle Timmy arrived. He drove the boys back to Manchester Road, where they crashed at a V-Not hangout, playing video games before falling asleep.

Days later, Feaster got word that Shawrica Lester was dead. Two recklessly fired bullets had lodged in her back as she ran to her car. She died before she reached the hospital.

The news must have stung. Feaster knew Shawrica. The Lesters lived in the heart of V-Not territory. The two kids attended Buchtel High School together. The following week, he attended her funeral with other V-Not members.

Meanwhile, police collected bullet fragments from three different guns. They also tracked down dozens of kids who were in the crowd that night. "We jumped on this in the first 48 hours," says Detective Darrell Parnell. "At first, people were very emotional, and we got a flood of information."

Several witnesses saw Feaster firing into the crowd.

On the morning of February 11, police caught Feaster on Manchester Road after a brief foot chase. He was charged with murder, aggravated rioting, felonious assault, and participating in gang activity.

The following day, he appeared before Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio to deny all charges. "The Lester family has our deepest sympathies," said his lawyer, Jane DeLoach. "He's just sick to his stomach. He can't eat. He can't sleep. This whole thing has torn him up."

But his regret was short-lived. As prosecutors began to build their case, V-Not worked just as hard to dismantle it. Police still didn't have the murder weapons, the gang knew, so a case could be made only with solid witnesses.

Members began hanging "Stop Snitching" T-shirts on street signs. They jumped on MySpace, sending out messages that anyone caught helping the police would be killed. They even knocked on Sandra Lester's door, requesting a donation for Feaster's defense fund.

One by one, witnesses fell silent. "A lot of people probably thought, 'Well, if they killed Tuna, why couldn't they come after me?'" says Sandra Lester.

Detective Parnell expected such obstacles. During his decade in homicide, he's seen the power of Akron's no-snitching law.