No Matter How Loud I Shout

Humes discusses Inglewood, where four teenagers cruise through the streets at night in a car, stopping to aim their semiautomatic weapons at a man and his girlfriend. His girlfriend is wounded but her 2-year-old daughter, Kyiara, dies of gunshot wounds. As an ambulance comes, the car pulls up to a group of schoolkids hanging on a corner: “As far as anyone can tell, the school kids are not gangsters or hard-core criminals, just young people passing time, idle and harmless” (260). The car opens fire again, and a boy and a girl go down. A young kid with wild hair emerges from the car and seems to beeline for Tila, who tries to escape under a parked car. Wild Hair calls her a bitch and shoots her thrice, then finally kills her execution-style by shooting her in the head. This is a level of violence Inglewood has not seen before, and the city goes on lockdown. Under immense community pressure, the police arrest a kid named Hugh who has been tentatively ID’d as the shooter, and the police consider the case resolved. But Humes argues that Hugh might be innocent.

Beckstrand goes to conclude Duncan’s murder trial amidst cameras that await news of Hugh, although one reporter is convinced that Jason is the killer, not Duncan, in regard to Beckstrand’s murder trial.