According to the family of 14-year-old Stephen Odeus and 16-year-old Stanley Blanc, the teens started fighting over clothes inside their apartment, located on Northeast First Avenue and 71st Street in Little Haiti, Sunday night. Their older brother, 18-year-old Mark Blanc, said he broke up his two younger siblings. “Everything cooled down for a second, but then it escalated outside,” said Mark.
Outside their apartment, Stephen and Stanley resumed their altercation, at which point, Mark said, the younger brother pulled out a gun and fired a shot, fatally striking his older sibling. “I ran outside, I got to the point of where [my brothers were fighting],” said Mark. “Right before my eyes, my brother shot my other brother.”
“I was an eyewitness, it happened
right in my face,” Mark continued. “I was less than five feet away.” The
tragedy did not stop there. Shortly after witnessing Stanley’s fratricide, Mark
heard another gunshot. “Then I heard my second brother die cause he shot
himself,” he said.
Mark said he thinks his younger
brother acquired the gun from a neighbor. He said he never saw Stephen with a
firearm inside their home. “That’s blood, you know, nobody wants to kill their
own brother,” he said. Mark said his mother has not stopped crying since the
shooting took place. “You never expect it to get to that point,” he said. “You
think it’s just going to be a regular fight, you know, just the usual fight,
you know, it’s about something small, and then it escalates into a death. It’s
the world we live in.”
Stephen was scheduled to graduate
from Horace Mann Middle School in El Portal.
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