Lawrence “Big Red” Brooks did what any rational person would do when he heard a rumor that his girlfriend was cheating on him — he picked up a gun and went on a shooting spree.
Over the course of two days in October 2005, Brooks, 25, and two friends drove the streets of his Charlotte neighborhood, hunting for Walter Blair. When Brooks finally caught up to Blair — who later swore to police that he didn’t know Brooks or his girlfriend — he tackled him and attempted to execute him while Brooks’ friend egged him on.
Brooks’ gun misfired.
Blair tried to grab the gun from Brooks but failed and took off running with Brooks hot on his tail. Brooks chased Blair through backyards and over fences. He eventually managed to put the first bullet in Blair in the Porter Street area, capping him in the rear end. That slowed Blair down enough for Brooks to catch up to him and begin what can only be described as an attempted castration. Brooks shot Blair four more times at close range in the groin and stomach, sending Blair to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Blair eventually recovered — relatively speaking — from horrible wounds and Brooks was charged with a string of crimes that included pistol-whipping his girlfriend while his mother held her down.
The Blair affair was the second violent attack attributed to Brooks’ that year. Five months earlier, in May 2005, Brooks was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
Brooks ran from police for four months after the attack on Blair. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police were so desperate to capture him that they put him on the city’s Top 10 Most Wanted List, and he was even featured on the America’s Most Wanted Web site, as reported on www.crimeincharlotte.com.
After it was announced by police and reported in the media that Brooks would be one of five fugitives featured on billboards across the city, Brooks finally turned himself in January 2006.
As with most criminal cases in Mecklenburg County, things started to go awry when Brooks entered the county’s terminally dysfunctional court system.
Mecklenburg County Magistrate Lori Diggs, the only court official involved in this case who appears to have any sense, denied Brooks bail on the attempted murder charge, blocking him from getting out of prison. According to state law and the official bail policy of the Mecklenburg County courts, judicial officials are supposed to grant bail unless there is reason to believe that the defendant poses a danger to others, might intimidate witnesses or poses a flight risk.
If anyone ever fit all three of these categories, it was Brooks. In addition to the current pending charges, Brooks has a three-page record of violence, assault and mayhem that dates back to 2000. But District Court Judge Philip F. Howerton Jr. saw things differently. Unlike the police department, the magistrate and the folks at America’s Most Wanted, he apparently wasn’t concerned enough about Brooks’ potential for violence to keep him in jail.
A month after Brooks turned himself in, Howerton let Brooks out on $25,000 bond on the attempted murder charge. The magistrate had set the bail amounts high enough on Brooks’ other related charges from the two 2005 attacks to keep him in prison, but Howerton took care of that, too. Howerton dramatically decreased the bail amounts on each of the charges against Brooks, including lowering the $50,000 bail the magistrate set on a separate assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill charge from the May 2005 incident to $10,000. (Defendants typically only have to put down 10 percent or less of their bail amounts to bond out.)
Because of Howerton’s generosity, Brooks walked out the door a month after police made a major effort to capture him. At press time, Howerton was unavailable for comment.
Sure enough, by the end of 2006, Brooks was rearrested on assault charges and let out again. He was arrested again two weeks ago for intimidating a witness after threatening Blair with a gun in an effort to keep him from testifying at Brooks’ upcoming trial. Brooks was in jail — temporarily I’m sure — as this story went to press.
Brooks isn’t the only dangerous felon Howerton has released. Creative Loafing took a look at the docket for February 2006, the month that Brooks was returned to the streets, and found Howerton had let out nearly two dozen violent individuals. Howerton slashed the $200,000 bond for Oscar Randalli-Martine to $5,000 in a first degree kidnapping case. He lowered bond amounts for Marvin Fitzger Outing, who was charged with kidnapping, breaking and entering, assault on a female and robbery with a dangerous weapon, dropping bond on some of those charges from $50,000 and $25,000 to $5,000.
It didn’t seem to matter to Howerton if the defendants had actually harmed their victims or if they did it in home-invasion style robberies that involved breaking and entering and kidnapping charges. Several defendants who came before Howerton, like Kenneth Clawson, were charged with inflicting serious injuries to their victims in the course of a breaking-and-entering style armed robbery, but Howerton bonded them out anyway.
Howerton, who has a reputation around the court house for priding himself on his speed in the courtroom, has been featured in this space before. Last time, it was for assigning public defenders paid for at taxpayer expense to every defendant who appeared before him without bothering to ask them if they were indigent or could afford an attorney.
Howerton barked “public defender” at defendants paraded before him so fast that they were never allowed to stop moving or to speak. It didn’t matter if they got out of order in line, or were later found by CL to live in $400,000 homes or to have assaulted a stewardess on a business trip that was part of their sales job. Howerton apparently takes a similar approach to violent criminals.
Meanwhile, the spike in violent crime in Charlotte continues to baffle local politicians.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2007.
Why exactly is this a newsworthy story when there is an illegal war going on that has killed 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians? Thousands are still dying in Darfur as well but I guess all these people have the wrong color skin.
This seems like a VERY newsworthy story to me. Some stupid judge is letting VIOLENT criminals out to roam the streets of MY neighborhood and YOURS on a daily basis. Guess what they are going to do?? Kill innocent people!! This Howerton guy definately needs to be taken care of.
The war in Irag isn’t the only thing the people of America need to be worried about you jack ass.
I care about what goes on in my neighborhood and in my city. I care that judges let violent criminals out in the streets.
What 655,000 innocent people are you refering to? Where do you get your facts? The idiots are killing each other in Iraq, we are just trying to stop them from doing so.
I care about what happens in Charlotte and you should to George Thompson.
We are attacked by our own people right here at home and that should matter to you.
We need to find a way to hold Judges like this responsible. He ran unopposed this year. With rulings like this, how do we let this happen? Wake up Charlotte!
Charlotte is turning into a hellhole.
And, its a black thing.
Why won’t anyone talk about this?
Let’s face it, almost ALL the violent crime in Charlotte is coming from one group of people: black males.
And young black males the large majority of that group.
The funny thing is, blacks are the ones who suffer the most from these criminals, altho, lately, it seems the robberies and such are spreading further and further out.
I am just glad I don’t live in the city anymore. It has gone to the dogs.
Police put their lives ion the line to protect the public and capture these career crimninals and this is how they are rewarded….by allowing these pieces of shit back on the street. Nobody cares until it closely affects them.. Wake Up!
George, you’d be concerned if this guy shoots you next.
We have a serious terror threat right here in Charlotte, the 8th most dangerous city in America. We had 83 murders last year, many of them indescriminate in nature.
The national death count in America on most days exceeds anything in IRAQ.
George, you sir, are an idiot. Why bring something out of context like that into this discussion. Typical liberal thinking, let’s whine about problems instead of bringing solutions to the table.
In my opinion, city, county, state, federal governments are really analogous to any typical corporate business. Think of your job today, certainly there are people you work with who are below average at best, their incompetencies hidden by that of above average co-workers. Even worse than that, some of these people are probably, quite simply, morons. Usually these morons are given positions where they are least likely to cause any real damage, well away from where the work is actually happening.
Enter the government “business”. As people in government get promoted to their level of incompetency, it is the opposite effect, the positions affect everyone at a much greater, yet hard to measure, magnitude.
First and foremost, the state needs to address judges like Howerton who continues to lower bonds on these criminals. I guess if crime directly affects him (Howerton) and his family, maybe he will take another approach and see what really goes on in the lives of innocent people in Charlotte.
Second, crime has no boundaries. Crime is not in just one area of Charlotte and yes, and crime has no color when it strikes. But unfortunately, young Black males are doing a large number of violent crimes but that is not to say that you have white kids from the ‘burbs who want to be ‘undercover gangstas’. To end this vicious cycle, these parents need to raise these young children they have now into good citizens and stop letting them getting away with things at a young age; hell, it’ll be way too late to enforce discipline on a teen since that teen isn’t molded into a model citizen. Parents, start WHOOPIN’ THAT ASS NOW while these kids are young and this non sense will stop!!
I say “Right On” to my brother George Thompson! keep up that “Don’t Snitch” attitude. That black on black crime…we’ll all sort it out in the ‘hood. We don’t need whitey locking us up, stealing our talented man power.
George wants to rally our concern for Darfur, which is black on black killing in Africa, but downplays concern for homegrown black on black crime right here in CLT, NC.
Go figure!
Let’s release all these criminals, take them directly to the airport and load them on planes headed to Iraq…
Excellent article. How does a judge like this stay on the bench?
unbelievable..if I had not already been the victim of invasion crime by a repeat offender. I held mine at gun point until the police came, they knew him on sight and called him by name, and off we went to court..where he served a fraction of a sentence. This judge is the crime lord in this town and its his hand that will help me choose to pull the trigger next time rather than handing another repeat bad guy over to injustice.
My son was murdered in Sept of last year and in April he may get out on probation. all because he has not been in trouble before. he said he was scared so he had a gun for protection but no one has said anythig about why he was carrying a stolen gun and was underage. and he was so scared for his life that he went and started an argument, waited outside and yes my son hit him first but really you don’t bring a gun to a fist fight. and you dont bring a gun unless you are planning on shooting and killing someone. the is full of crap. if this was one of their children this guy would rot in prison.