BURNED UP: ALLEGED RETALIATION ATTACKS

A southeast Mobile resident said she believes drug dealers torched her car
and fired a bullet into her apartment in retribution after she reported
their activities to authorities.

Kasandra Burnett, 31, said Monday she is not going to be intimidated even
though she needed the burned early model Honda Prelude to get her to and
from work.

The mother of three said the attacks on her car and her apartment began
after she called the Mobile Housing Board -- the agency that oversees the
Oaklawn Apartments where she lives -- to complain about men loitering and
possibly making drug deals in front of her apartment.

The activities about which she complained have not abated, and she has
since come under attack, she said.

The car was burned early Friday and a hole was shot in the kitchen window
of her apartment early Saturday.

"I'm hurting; that was my only transportation to work," Burnett said after
showing a Mobile Register reporter her fire-gutted vehicle sitting in the
apartment complex parking lot at Baltimore and Gayle streets. Burnett said
she works at Mobile Community Action's Prichard office.

The attacks on her began about two months ago when someone pelted the car
with eggs, then tried to smash a rear window, she said. But, the
intimidation reached a new level of danger at 2:45 a.m. Friday when her car
went up in flames, she said.

Then about 4 a.m. Saturday, someone fired a bullet through the downstairs
window of her kitchen and threw what she believed was a bottle through the
window of an upstairs bedroom. The three children were at home at the time,
she said.

Mobile Housing Authority oversees the low-income, public housing
development off Broad Street in southeast Mobile.

Burnett, whose children range in age from 4 to 11, described the area as
drug and crime infested.

She said she asked the Housing Board authorities to do something to curtail
the activities.

"I just don't like them out there because anything can happen," she said.
"A drive-by could happen, and I don't want my kids to get hit."

Burnett and her neighbor, Nettie King, 46, said that the video camera
security system at the apartment complex had been damaged by lightning.
Although they have complained, it has not been repaired, they said.

Burnett said she is concerned about the attacks but that she will continue
to call the Housing Board and Mobile police to report any loitering or drug
activity at the apartments.

"I'm not going to let them scare me that way," said Burnett.

She said she is trying to find a safer apartment she can afford. She said,
however, the only offer the Housing Board has made is to relocate her in
Prichard's Gulf Village.

"I'm trying to find somewhere else to go, but the Housing Board wants to
put me in a worse area than where I'm already at, and I don't think that's
nice and not good at all," Burnett said.

Mobile Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Steve Huffman said Monday that the
department's preliminary investigation reveals only that the fire was
"intentionally set."

So far, investigators have not determined what was used to start the fire,
Huffman said.

Kathy Belcher, director of the Housing Board's rental housing program, said
Monday she was aware of Burnett's car being burned and the shot being fired
into the apartment, and Mobile police are investigating.

Belcher would not label Oak lawn as a high-crime area. She said only that
crime exists and "police are responding to it." Plans are under way to
establish a police mini precinct in the Oaklawn complex later this year,
she said.

Belcher said she is aware of the problem with the video cameras and they
will be repaired or replaced as soon as possible. The cameras were damaged
in mid July, she said.

Although cameras are a help, they are not the solution to the crime
problem, Belcher said.

"It's going to have to be a community effort between the people, the police
and the Housing Board working together," Belcher said. Complaints made to
the Housing Board and to police are supposed to be confidential, Belcher said.

She said she had no idea how people might have learned that Burnett had
made complaints.

Belcher said that late Monday housing officials offered Burnett a transfer
to the R.V. Taylor development on Michigan Avenue, also in southeast
Mobile. They are awaiting Burnett's answer, she said.

Officer Pat Mitchell, a Mobile Police Department spokesman, said that
police are investigating the fire and shooting.

The Police Department gets a "high volume of calls" to Oaklawn Apartments
from "domestic disputes to illegal drug activity," Mitchell said.

Though it can be risky, he said, Burnett did the right thing by reporting
the suspected drug activity.

"We certainly encourage people to report any suspicious activity, criminal
activity," Mitchell said. "People who report it and want to keep their
identity anonymous certainly can do that."

The Police Department and Housing Board have a "close working
relationship," Mitchell said. If someone reports the activity to the
Housing Board, board officials will report it to police, he said.