A fight was going to happen. Somebody brought a gun.

Police say this scenario played out to nearly tragic consequences in Norwood two weeks ago, when four young men were shot, two critically, outside of Tracey Towers.

The four victims, all of Ghanaian decent, are expected to make full recoveries.

Meanwhile, two suspects were arrested the day after the shooting and charged with attempted murder and gang assault. A police report said the two suspects were from the Bronx, but outside the area. It’s widely believed, however, that the duo, at the very least, spends a great deal of time, in the Knox-Gates neighborhood, which is directly across Mosholu Parkway from Tracey.

Details of what happened that Friday evening remain murky at best, but residents say the shooting stems from a long-standing feud between youth at Tracey Towers and Knox-Gates, two communities only a football field apart.

“When you can’t contain something that is so explosive, this is what happens,” said one Tracey resident.

The Scene

Just after sundown, at about 8:30 in the evening, some 15 shots were fired across the wooded darkness of Mosholu Parkway into a group of young black men who were hanging out at the bottom of a Tracey Towers driveway near Paul Avenue.

One of the young men, Farid Haruna, 22, a student at Sullivan County Community College who moved the United States from Ghana at the age of 5, took a bullet to the chest resulting in a punctured lung. Haruna had just returned from school three hours earlier to visit family and friends, said his sister, Laila Haruna, 20, who lives at Tracey.

Somehow, Haruna ended up in Tracey’ security office where a security guard and another resident applied pressure to his wound while waiting for an ambulance. The resident, who declined to give his name, estimated that the medics took about 20 minutes to arrive.

Another Tracey resident from Ghana who requested anonymity had just returned from work when he heard the burst of shots. He ran out onto the driveway ramp and saw one of the victims lying on the concrete, bleeding from a bullet wound to his chest.

“I got scared, really scared,” said the 20-year-old resident who put pressure on the young man’s wound until a police officer showed up and immediately began asking the victim questions. “He’s dying and this guy asks, ‘Who shot you?'” the young man said, incredulously.

Two others were shot, both in the foot.

Sergeant Kevin Maloney, the head of the anti-crime detective unit assigned to Norwood, said the police showed up to a “horrific scene” at Tracey.

(At a tenant meeting, Maloney conceded that police probably questioned the victims before they were taken away by medics because it would have been irresponsible for them not to gather as much information about the suspects as possible. Also, Maloney said, it is policy for police to wait for medics before administering any aid.)

The police initially identified three victims. The two with chest wounds were sent to St. Barnabas Hospital, while the other victim, who sustained a less severe foot wound, was taken to North Central Bronx Hospital. The fourth victim later checked into North Central on his own.

Upon arrival, police shut down the entire area, including Mosholu Parkway and all the entrances to Tracey. Meanwhile, 25 extra cops from the 52nd Precinct began canvassing the area, talking to witnesses, reviewing videotape and looking for evidence. Police commissioner Ray Kelly made the shooting a top priority and sent any overtime officers from the Bronx to the scene.

Right where the victims were shot, Maloney said police found a host of weapons, including bats, metal pipes and electrical wire.

“There’s two sides to the story,” Maloney told an anxious crowd at the Tracey tenant meeting last week. “Let’s not say we’re not to blame over here [at Tracey]. Somebody came with bats. Somebody came with guns.”

While the police were searching for clues and interviewing witnesses, a crowd began to gather beyond the yellow police tape. Maloney said the crowd began screaming at the police to go across the parkway. The shooters, they yelled, came from Knox-Gates.

The Aftermath

The next day, police arrested three suspects; two of whom were identified from pictures by the victims from their hospital beds and arrested. Police have identified the suspects as Rondell Rose, 16, and Juan Martinez, 18. As of Tuesday afternoon before this paper went to press, the police were still looking for a third shooter, said Deputy Inspector James Alles, the relatively new commanding officer of the 52nd Precinct.

Alles said they have requested that the area around Knox-Gates become an Impact Zone, which would flood the area with foot-patrolling cops temporarily. Since the shooting, he said they’ve been patrolling are vigorously.

The most telling, and disturbing, fallout from the shooting outside of Tracey is that know one seemed surprised by it. Not residents, community leaders or the police. It was almost as if people were surprised that it didn’t happen earlier.

At the Tracey tenant meeting, several residents became emotional. “I told you this was going to happen,” they shouted at police, who didn’t argue.

Residents from Tracey and Knox-Gates say the beef between the two dates back six years, but no one knows exactly when or why or how it started. Just like no one can say what precipitated the shooting on Friday night.

There are differences between the two communities. Tracey is made up primarily of black and African immigrant residents, while Knox-Gates is primarily Hispanic. While no one would say Tracey is tight-knit, residents there argued that they have a more defined sense of community than the unaffiliated conglomeration of buildings in Knox-Gates. For the most part, the youth coming out of Tracey, like Farid Haruna, are still pursuing academics, while many of the young adults hanging out on West Mosholu Parkway North are out of school and unemployed.

“Everybody here goes to school,” said a 19-year-old Tracey resident who requested anonymity. “Lots of them dropped out. It’s jealousy.”

“[The victims] are decent kids,” said Don Bluestone, who comes in contact with kids from both sides, in one way or another, as the head of the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center. “To my knowledge, they are in college now and they are not involved in any of these activities.”

Growing Apart

Many of the Tracey kids say they went to school with their counterparts at Knox-Gates, ate dinner with their families, played sports with them. At a certain age, however, the relationships began to sour and the distance across the parkway became longer and darker. Soon, a trip to McDonalds on Jerome Avenue became a trek across enemy lines.

Every Tracey resident has a story about a violent encounter near the parkway or Jerome that they either witnessed or heard about. Cops say they are constantly making narcotics busts in the Knox-Gates area. They just arrested someone there for using a TASER gun to rob somebody.

Though some Tracey residents said the beef is racial, Knox-Gates youth (a relative term as many are in their upper 20s or 30s), many of whom claim allegiance to the M-MOB, also have constant run-ins with gangs across Jerome Avenue, north of the parkway, which is also mostly Hispanic.

Knox-Gates resident Lyn Pyle, a founder of the COVE, a youth outreach group in Knox-Gates, said her neighborhood has been very quiet since the shooting. She said she’s hoping the entire community can work together to improve the situation. “I think we need to sit down and figure out how to respect each other’s territory and come to some kind of understanding,” she said.

Stacy Jones grew up in Tracey Towers and raised her kids, now teenagers, there. She’s witnessed severe beatings near Jerome and now offers to walk with any Tracey youth when they need to make the trip across the parkway. Like everyone else, she doesn’t harbor any illusions of magic potions. “I wish there was an easy solution, but there isn’t one.”