‘…at least one of the young men who was murdered may have recently become a Christian, but the killing itself was almost certainly just another gang murder”

On Saturday, February 6th The Aquila Report ran a story about two Christian young men who were murdered in Boynton Beach, Florida. The story – a reprint from an article written by Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission – proved to be wrong. And the error has been repeated during recent days by Mission Network News, by Christian News Wire, by Christian Web News, by One News Now; by BosNewsLife, by Christian Telegraph, and probably more that I am not aware of.

Even several of the local newspapers in South Florida who reported the story made allusions to the possible religious motive.

When we make a judgment on a story from another source to share on The Aquila Report, we have at least two things with which we are concerned. Is the story in and of itself newsworthy? And, is the story of interest to our specific readers. A normal gang-related murder in South Florida would fail both those tests. But with the spin that these two men were ‘street preachers’ who had been ‘martyred for witnessing’ we ran with one of the reports (the one that seemed to be the most reliable).

Now, the New Times Online in Broward and Palm Beach Counties in Florida is reporting – in greatly researched detail – that the murders did in fact happen, that at least one of the young men who was murdered may have recently become a Christian, but the killing itself was almost certainly just another gang murder. Following is a gist of the real story – notice the importance of the cell phone call. ‘Plug” was leaving and someone on the phone apparently told him to ‘take care of business’:

At around 8:15 on a Saturday night late last month, Detective Alex Marino Moreno of the Boynton Beach Police Department responded to a call. Two men were lying dead on SW 2nd Ave., both of gunshot wounds. One of the victims was 23-year-old Stephen Ocean. The other, 25-year-old Tite Sufra. They’d been walking the neighborhood, preaching the word of God.

It was clear to Moreno that this was an execution-style shooting. The wounds showed a bullet entering both skulls at close range. And there was a witness. A friend walking with Sufra and Ocean had stood by for about 15 minutes as they paused under a large tree, evangelizing the Word to Jeriah “Plug” Woody, an 18-year-old dressed in a black wave hat and black gloves.

The witness told police that Woody had taken a call on his cell. As Ocean and Sufra started to walk away, Woody turned and ran after them. Sufra walked back to meet Woody. When he was in close range, Woody fired and killed him. In a panic, Ocean ran, and was gunned down by a bullet to the back. As he lay bleeding on the pavement, Woody walked up and put a bullet in his head.

The case was baffling. Who would shoot two preachers? But this wasn’t a case of religious persecution. It turns out that Stephen Ocean was likely an ex-member of a Boynton Beach gang known as the B-Town Boys. And the B-Town Boys were engaged in long-running, all-out warfare with another Haitian gang called the San Castle Soldiers, both of them subsets of the larger Top 6 gang. The feud ran so deep, and its origins were so obscure, that Lt. Mike Wallace of the Violent Crimes Task Force once likened it to the war between the Hatfield and the McCoys. As with the Mafia, it seemed that once you were in with the B-Town Boys, you were in for life.

Woody turned himself in to Boynton Beach police on February 3rd. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

One of the victims, Stephen Ocean, may have found God recently, but he was no angel. He had been arrested in 2006 with his friend Berno Charlemond for carrying a loaded gun in his car at the Boynton Beach Mall.

Violent Crimes Task Force director Mike Wallace told the Juice last week that gang crime has dropped by 50 percent since law enforcement started using RICO against gang members. But it seems that the B-Town boys and the San Castle Soldiers have a memory at least as long as the long arm of the law

Source: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/02/gangs_boynton_b-town_boys_jeriah_woody_stephen_ocean.php

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

The Aquila Report will continue to run stories from other media sources (we have no hope of covering these kinds of stories), and when we err, we promise to let you know.