Preventing and Suppressing Gang Crimes through Comprehensive Anti-Gang Legislation: A Solution to Nebraska’s Gang Problem (White Paper)

Authors

Daniel J. Hassing, University of Nebraska College of Law

Date of this Version

4-28-2009

Document Type

Article

Citation

Nebraska Law Bulletin (April 28, 2009)

Comments

Copyright 2009, the author

Abstract

In the early morning hours of March 16, 2008, between ten and twenty members of the 18th Street and 13th Street gangs engaged in a street fight at the intersection of 15th and Erie Streets. The gangs played for keeps as they fought with knives, beer bottles, and machetes. Brandishing a knife, seventeen-year-old Fermin Aldana repeatedly stabbed unarmed twenty-year-old Ramiro Prado-Reyes. After the fight, Prado-Reyes’ friends carried him to a nearby house and called an ambulance —he died a short time later. An autopsy revealed that he had been stabbed six times from his scalp down to above his kneecap. A five-inch deep puncture wound to Prado-Reyes’ chest literally cut his life short. As Prado-Reyes’ former assistant principal stated, the young man’s death was “senseless.”