Leaders vow gang cease-fire will stand

Standing beside the relatives of homicide victims, Mayor Thomas M. Menino and a key architect of a truce between two of Boston's most violent street gangs vowed yesterday to keep the cease-fire alive and make sure a former gang leader did not die in vain.

Jahmol A. Norfleet, a 20-year-old former leader of the H-Block gang in Roxbury who had been working to keep the peace, was shot in the head outside his grandmother's house Tuesday night.

"Jahmol is a symbol of the hopes and dreams of our community," said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, one of the ministers involved in negotiating the truce between H-Block and the rival Heath Street gang in Jamaica Plain. "He is a young man who is a peacemaker. This is not the end. We are resolved to move forward and to not let this tragic and senseless death get in our way."

Since getting out of prison about three months ago after serving a year on gun charges, Norfleet had been determined to turn his life around and to help other youths do the same, his grandmother, Ruth Perkins, said yesterday.

Menino said Norfleet attended truce meetings every Friday night and recruited other youths to join the effort. "Jahmol was one of those individuals who wanted to see a different world for himself, his friends, and his community," the mayor said. "Today we gather more committed to make this city a safer city."

Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll and Brown said that despite the timing of Norfleet's death -- on the first anniversary of the slaying of 17-year-old Heath Street member Carl Searcy -- it is too early to determine suspects or the motive for Norfleet's shooting.

Brown said that the truce is alive and that talks will continue. But teenagers from the Heath and H-Block neighborhoods are distraught, he added.

Last night, ministers and youth workers fanned out across turf claimed by Heath and H-Block to try to soothe rising tensions.

Norfleet's relatives and friends gathered around a living room table yesterday morning in the apartment where Perkins raised him. A nearby china cabinet displayed some of his many basketball trophies.

He had recently enrolled in classes to earn his high school equivalency degree, worked as a clothing salesman at J City in Mattapan Square, and was active in the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Roxbury, where he had been baptized since his release from prison, Perkins said.

In many respects, he was like any other young man. Posters of slain rap stars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. adorned Norfleet's bedroom walls.

Hours before he died, he visited the church, where he found out he had been chosen for a landscaper's job and watched an antiviolence movie. Norfleet regularly attended such meetings at the church, and he and several other youths were planning to begin making their own antiviolence film on Saturday, relatives said.

When Norfleet arrived home Tuesday night, he cajoled Perkins into making some of his favorite foods, collard greens and fried chicken. But before he ate, he answered his cellphone and said he had to meet someone outside.

Norfleet's sister, Teah Norfleet, 18, arrived home from work at about 7:15 p.m., when she saw her brother standing with one of his friends on the sidewalk, near the porch.

"We were standing there for a while when we saw two dudes with hoodies walk up," she recalled yesterday. "I couldn't see their faces. They just started shooting. I thought my brother ran to the back yard. When I was inside, they were still shooting."

She said she returned to the sidewalk, where she found her brother, motionless and lying on his side. She realized she had been grazed in the upper left leg by a bullet.

"I was right there in the middle, but they were shooting at my brother," she said.

Perkins said she doesn't believe that her grandson was killed in an act of retaliation tied to Searcy's killing. She also disputed that he was a gang leader.

"He was a good boy," Perkins said as she clutched a picture of her grandson. "He lived on the streets, and all the other kids followed him, but that doesn't make him a gang leader."

At yesterday's press conference at Egleston Square Peace Garden in Jamaica Plain, survivors of homicide victims from the Heath Street and H-Block area wept in front of a phalanx of cameras as they spoke and, in some cases, yelled about the impact the continuing violence is having on their community.

India Crawford, whose 18-year-old brother, Yorki Lipscomb, was slain in H-Block territory in April 2005, beseeched the killers to stop taking lives.

"You all need to stop it,because you're not only hurting yourselves doing these things, but you're also hurting your family and people who care about you!" she shouted. "It's got to stop. If it doesn't stop, what are you going to do? You're going to continue to go on and kill yourselves, so there will be no one left!"

Schenel Searcy, whose son Carl was slain last year, blasted the Boston Herald for identifying her other son and reporting that police wanted to question him about Norfleet's death.

"He is 14 years old," Searcy said. "He is scared to walk alone, to be alone. . . . I know that my son doesn't have anything to do with retaliation for anybody's murder."

Brian R. Ballou can be reached at bballou@globe.com; Suzanne Smalley, at ssmalley@globe.com.