Word: hagan
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Raised amid violence, Hagan responded with greater violence. Walk around like a hand grenade with the pin pulled, and people will make room. A soldier since age 13, he is adept at using battlefield logic to justify the daily carnage. "If you're in a war, you just accept that the only thing you can do is stay alive," he says. He impatiently explains the necessity of stealing from the enemy: "It's like I'm coming up in the world, you know. I'm trying to make it, and I need your wallet. That...
...gang is your family," he explains. "If you're my home boy, I fight for you, no matter what the odds. If you're the enemy, it's do or die." Young punks with real guns playing capture the flag for keeps. Hagan is a member of the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips, a pack of predators named after their turf along 83rd Street. They identify themselves with hand signals and mark their territory with hieroglyphic graffiti that translate into a simple warning: TRESPASSERS MAY BE SHOT...
Within a year after joining the gang, Hagan was drinking, fighting and smoking PCP with the best of the home boys. Eager to please the older gang members, he became the fearless errand boy, quickly learning to rob and steal and priding himself on his growing reputation as a "crazy." He says: "I was like a hardhead. The more my parents told me to stay away from gangs, the more I wanted to hang with them." He has his own ideas about parenthood: "If I had a son, I would give him a choice: either he can go to school...
Shuffled among five different high schools because of his gang activity, Hagan was arrested as a juvenile in 1979 for robbery and served five months. In 1981 he mugged an off-duty policeman and served four years. He finally managed to graduate in 1982 while behind bars. "When I was younger, it was fun," he says of his criminal career. "Like Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. I didn't think I was going to get into the radical stuff." But the radical stuff became addictive...
Still, even that twisted logic does not explain his cold-blooded murder of Kellie Mosier. A junior in high school, she was working at her first job, behind the counter of an ice-cream parlor. While Hagan was being initiated into gangs at the age of 13, she was still playing with dolls. Resisting pressure at school to join the gangs, she selected friends who shared dreams beyond the streets, and they stuck together for protection. Poised and attractive, she dreamed of being a fashion model...