ST. LOUIS • In the wake of back-to-back shootings that killed one person and injured three others recently, residents in the 700 block of Thrush Avenue are understandably on edge.There is a sense that retaliation is coming.“It’s like something spiritual, something I can feel,” said Venus Houston, 38, from her front porch. “It’s heavy.”During the day, she and others on the block seem to watch every vehicle that turns onto the dead-end street in the Baden neighborhood in north St. Louis, hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face behind the wheel, not another shooter.Thursday evening, after darkness fell, Houston searched for friendly headlights. She hoped it was her ride out of there for the night.Too many in the family to stick together, three of her children, a sister and young nieces who live with her had already departed for havens, a recent regular routine to escape the threat of violence. Houston and her 7-year-old son, Elijah, were going to be the last to go.Their ride was running behind.“It has been inconvenient because for the most part we haven’t been sleeping here,” Houston said of the shootings.But she said it was worth the effort to avoid getting caught in the middle of another incident.She said she grew up with many of the people on both sides of recent fighting on the street.“I know these people, and I know they do stupid things,” she said.LIKE A WAROn July 20, a Sunday afternoon when all kinds of people were outside on the street, two large groups faced off in front of a home on the block. Jolice Trice, 25, had recently moved there.Witnesses said one group rallied with Trice, the other with her former boyfriend, Terrell Perkins, 26, who lived a few blocks over on Baden Avenue. Trice recently lived at the Baden home, too.Witnesses told police that Trice and Perkins had an abusive relationship and recently broke up.But neighbors said what happened Sunday night was more like a war than a domestic dispute.A resident at the Baden home, Harvey Perkins, 57, said in an interview that Trice was with an angry group that tried to break into the Baden home Sunday before the shooting. He said they nearly ripped the door off the hinges before they left.Harvey Perkins is one of two people at the home with serious disabilities. The scare angered his sister, Patricia Perkins.Shortly after the incident, two groups of people were face-to-face in front of the house where Trice lived on Thrush.Arguments escalated. Witnesses said Trice’s group fired first in an erratic show of arms to push the Baden group back.By the end of the confrontation, parked cars and nearby homes were sprayed with bullets. Trice was pronounced dead at a hospital. Two other women with her were hospitalized for gunshot wounds.Somehow, scores of nearby children weren’t hurt.Terrell Perkins, 26, and his brother, Deon’Andre Ford, 21, were each charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action and other crimes. Their mother, Patricia Perkins, 53, all three from the same address on Baden, was charged with second-degree murder and other crimes.Armed with a pipe, Patricia Perkins is accused of rallying the group to attack Trice.Neighbors said the whole mess started over an outstanding drug debt worth about $20 to $40.DRUG INFESTEDA worn sign on North Broadway speaks to the days when this was a German neighborhood: “Danke schoen for visiting Baden.”“The majority of people are good, hard-working,” said the Rev. Don Buhr, of nearby Our Lady of the Holy Cross Catholic Church. “Many are unemployed. Not because they are unwilling. It’s just there are no jobs.”Where one street is calm, another is rough.“It’s definitely infested,” Buhr said. “Anybody who is on drugs, keep away from them.”Crime in Baden has been declining over the years, according to city police statistics. The rate is above that of the city as a whole, but ranks below a couple dozen other neighborhoods.A vast majority of the area’s crime, like in many parts of the city, is related to burglary, larceny, robbery and vehicle thefts. Between 2000 and 2010, the area lost 14 percent of its residents, according to U.S. Census statistics.When Dana Stiebel started buying property around Baden Avenue about 10 years ago, she said it was like a McDonald’s drive-in for drugs and prostitution. She said she is known as a no-nonsense landlord.“None of these people, if you look at them, are angels,” she said. “That’s not who lives here.”She knew Trice when Trice was placed in one of her apartments through a nonprofit that works with people aging out of foster care. She described her as “an extremely impulsive” beautiful girl.Stiebel said she knows the Perkins family, too. The family rents the home on Baden from her. She said Terrell has done construction work for her in the past.Friends of his half-brother, Ford, said he became the father of a baby girl the same day of the shooting. Some of the people Trice’s group was said to be looking for on Baden before the gunfire erupted were at the hospital for the birth.CROSSFIREAfter there was finally calm from the big shooting July 20, another one happened later that night, just three doors down. Residents on Thrush believe the two shootings are connected, though police won’t comment.Demetrius Murphy said in an interview that he was sitting on his front stoop about 2 a.m. with his son and a friend. A small car passed, then parked a block away. When four men emerged spread out in the darkness, Murphy, 35, suspected another gunfight. He got up to go inside.“I didn’t want to get caught in no crossfire,” he said.A few shots went off, he said. One hit Murphy in the back.“I felt the heat, and I fell on the floor,” he said from the same spot, after coming home from the hospital Thursday.He said he must have been targeted by mistake.Neighbors came out Thursday to congratulate him for living through the attack. Still wearing a hospital robe, he shook hands and accepted hugs. A large white bandage covered his back. Another bandage covered his side where he was treated for a collapsed lung.“I don’t bother nobody,” he said, still in disbelief. “I stay to myself with my neighbors and friends.”Next door to the homecoming, Jasimin Ewing, 21, sat on her stoop, playing with her 8-month-old son, Ra-Monie, who sported a red Cardinals T-shirt. She just moved in last week. She wasn’t clear on the recent events. She knew Murphy had been injured but didn’t ask any questions.She plans to stay to herself.“I feel like if I mind my own business then I’ll have nothing to do with it,” she said.DARK EMPTY STREETVenus Houston said keeping to yourself isn’t a perfect shield when bullets go off in a crowd or when retaliation is blind. That is why she and her extended family packed up at night to stay with friends.Waiting for a ride out of the neighborhood Thursday night, Houston and her son, Elijah, 7, discussed the shootings. He seemed to enjoy playing but still said he was scared.“Sometimes at night I don’t know if there is going to be a shootout,” the boy said, telling his mother that if she would have been the one recently killed, “I would have been crying for the rest of my life.”The mother looked down the dark empty street. Murphy’s homecoming had passed. She noticed that nobody was on their stoops or porches.Unlike other streets, there were few cars parked. It was quiet.“This is abnormal,” she said.Walker Moskop of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
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