Series: Day Two - Article Two

TURF WAR RISES OUT OF ASHES OF ST. THOMAS, TRAPPING FAMILY

Those who wanted Robert Pittman dead finally caught up with him on Easter
as he napped in his truck after partying at a nearby club.

The murder near Orleans and North Claiborne avenues fell within the seven
square miles of the city that police targeted as a "hot zone" after the
number of killings skyrocketed early in 2003. Pittman was the year's 85th
murder.

More specifically, his death was one in a rash of killings that police
associate with a turf war that simmered after the St. Thomas public housing
development was torn down and its residents scattered to other public
housing sites, particularly the St. Bernard development.

According to his mother, Pittman, 24, was a marked man once police arrested
him in August 2002 and accused him of killing Alfred Edwards, 22, and
wounding another man that June in the St. Bernard public housing complex.

The Edwards and Pittman families say the bloodshed stemmed from the
Downtown-Uptown rivalry among drug dealers that grew deadlier as foes found
themselves living cheek by jowl in the St. Bernard development.

Warren Riley, chief of operations for the New Orleans Police Department,
said a task force was formed to identify problem residents from both the
former St. Thomas and the St. Bernard complexes.

In 2002, the St. Bernard development recorded 13 slayings. Twelve people
were killed there last year.

A "significant portion" of the violence can be attributed to the turf wars,
Riley said. However, he added, the situation is slowly improving.

"I think the main characters have been eliminated through murdering each
other, and the other portion has been eliminated by going to jail," he
said. "They have eliminated themselves."

After leaving St. Thomas in 1999, Pittman's family lived within a block of
the St. Bernard development in a modest brick home in the 1200 block of
Harrison Avenue. Pittman's mother, who asked that her name not be
published, said her family never felt welcome.

Pittman was arrested in August 2002, two months after police say he opened
fire on a car and fatally shot Edwards in the 1400 block of Senate Street.
More bloodshed followed.

The next to die was Pittman's cousin, Antoine Cooper, 22, who was shot
inside his truck near Martin Luther King Boulevard and South Claiborne
Avenue on Aug. 19, 2002.

His father was next. Robert Robbins was gunned down on Sept. 8 near
Buchanan and Senate streets.

After the second slaying in three weeks, Pittman's mother went into hiding.

"I just left," she said, recalling the night her husband was killed. "I had
a dress on. My family just put me in the car and whisked me away."

She returned to the Harrison Avenue home three months later, in December,
and packed in the dark.

"I didn't want anyone to know that I was there," she said.

On Christmas Eve 2002, the district attorney's office refused the charges
against Pittman in Edwards' slaying. All seemed quiet as 2003 began.

Pittman's mother said she spoke to her son on April 20, just hours before
he was killed. He seemed to have been at ease -- so comfortable, in fact,
that he left friends at a club to get some sleep in his truck. Someone
walked up and opened fire; he died at Charity Hospital. According to the
coroner's office, he had alcohol in his system but no drugs.

Pittman, police say, was a drug dealer. His rap sheet showed two drug
arrests, three felony arrests involving a firearm and 10 misdemeanor arrests.

His mother, though, characterized him as a good son and the father of six
children who was unfairly targeted by police.

She said she does not believe her son killed Edwards. Looking back,
however, she believes his arrest led to his death, as well as those of his
cousin and father.