April 24: Arrest doesn't end talk of bus safety

The gunshot that killed a St. Paul teen on a Metro Transit bus early Sunday was the result of an ongoing feud, police said Monday.

Police declined to discuss details of the feud between 16-year-old Earl Freeman and the suspect, who was arrested hours after the shooting. The only thing they would say was that Freeman wasn't a random target.

Jerome Pablo Cross, 17, of St. Paul was arrested on suspicion of homicide. He is expected to be charged this week as an adult in the slaying, despite his family's protests that he wasn't at the St. Paul bus stop where Freeman was shot.

"We feel for the other boy's family," said James Cross, Jerome's father. "But they've got the wrong guy."

Although homicides on U.S. public transportation have been rare recently, Sunday's shooting was the second homicide and third violent attack on a Twin Cities bus since early March.

According to the Federal Transit Administration, eight homicides were reported to have occurred on the nation's buses and commuter trains between 2002 and 2006.

In 2005, the most recent year for which the FBI has complete statistics, only one of the 16,692 homicides reported nationwide occurred on public transit.

Metro Transit Police Chief Dave Indrehus called the bus attacks "really isolated incidents" and took pains Monday to reassure bus and light-rail riders that they were safe.

"Transit systems reflect the communities they serve," he said, "and violent acts sometimes spill over" from those communities.

Asked about the weekend shooting, most Metro Transit riders on Monday said it scared them but they were not planning to change their riding habits. Some have no choice.

Mary Cramsie, a St. Paul homemaker riding the Route 3 bus, said she doesn't own a car and relies on the bus system to get around.

"I wouldn't feel safe riding really late at night," she said. "But you can't live life in fear; otherwise you couldn't go anywhere."

Nastacia Foster, a University of Minnesota sophomore on the Route 16 bus Monday, called the incident "horrible" but said it didn't surprise her.

"I feel like, when I'm on the bus, anything can happen," she said. "What's to stop someone from doing something violent?"

During the past year, Indrehus said, a total of eight minor incidents have been reported on the Route 74 bus line, the one that Freeman was riding as he went home from a friend's house.

"I don't consider that line a major concern for us," Indrehus said.

He outlined steps that Metro Transit has recently taken to increase safety on 800 buses that carried 74 million riders last year. They center mostly on increasing the number of officers on buses while beefing up surveillance cameras.

With 44 full-time officers and 60 part-time officers from other agencies, the Metro Transit police force has quadrupled in the past five years, Indrehus said. At any given time during the day, 15 squad cars are on the street, with officers boarding buses five times each shift.

In addition, between six and eight officers spend their entire shifts aboard buses and trains each day, he said.

Cameras are on all of the system's buses and 240 buses are being retrofitted with new digital cameras, he said.

Drivers have what Indrehus called "instant communication" with officers via radio, but he dismissed the idea of putting officers on every bus. "It's not feasible ... nor is it necessary," he said.

A fight, then a shot

The shooting occurred at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday, while the bus was stopped at E. 5th and Sibley Streets. According to witnesses, the shooter stepped off the bus, then leaned back inside and shot Freeman in the chest.

Rochelle Kinsey, Freeman's aunt and guardian, said that police have told her that there was a fight on the bus that led up to the shooting. Also, she said police told her a friend of Freeman's who was on the bus said there was an altercation that pitted Freeman and his friend against a group of about 20.

St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh declined to discuss details of Jerome Cross' arrest. But James Cross said he was with his son when it happened about noon Sunday.

"He told me, 'With all the love that I have, they've got the wrong guy,' " James Cross said. "I asked him to be honest with me because it may hurt now, but it's going to hurt more later if he lied."

The suspect was described Sunday by police as black, but Jerome Cross is Indian. When asked about the discrepancy, Walsh said that some information from a preliminary account proved to be incorrect.

On Monday afternoon, James Cross was among those in his family's Rice Street neighborhood wearing a shirt with his son's image and "FREE MY BABY" on front.

Victim 'a good kid'

News of the arrest did little Monday to comfort Rochelle Kinsey, Freeman's aunt and legal guardian. "It doesn't bring our baby back," she said.

"He was a good kid who didn't always make the best decisions," she said. "A lot of the time, he treated the world tough because the world treated him tough."

Freeman's mother, Kinsey's only sibling, died seven years ago after being diagnosed with lupus. Freeman, the eldest of four children, then went to live with his aunt.

Freeman had been in trouble with the law before for "juvie crimes," Kinsey said. He would sometimes act the part of a tough kid, trying to make a name for himself.

"But he was not a gang member," she said, adding that he may have hung around people who were. She said that he had no gang markings.

The only tattoo he had, she said, was a large "RIP Latissa" on the right side of his neck -- a tribute to his late mother.

It was how she was able to find out for sure that Freeman was the shooting victim.

"I was convinced for a while that it was somebody's poor child in the morgue, but it wasn't mine," she said. Then she made the call to the Ramsey County medical examiner's office and told them of the tattoo.

"I'm so sorry," said the person on the other end of the line.

Kevin Behr, a University of Minnesota student reporter on assignment for the Star Tribune, contributed to this report. hpadilla@startribune.com • 651-298-1551 vonste@startribune.com • 612-673-7184