A triple shooting that critically wounded a 9-year-old in 2012 was connected to a series of retaliatory shootings involving once-promising boxer James Berry and his neighborhood crew, police said in court Thursday.
Berry, who The Sun profiled in 2007, has been charged with killing six people since 2008, part of a falling out among him and his friends, who went by the name "D-Block" after the area of Division and Bloom streets.
Berry was acquitted in the first case, and this month was acquitted of two other murders despite testimony from a co-defendant who had pleaded guilty. He has two pending cases for three additional murders.
In the 2012 case on trial this week, Berry was on the victim side - he was shot in the leg, along with Travian Taylor and the 9-year-old boy, who was hit in the stomach by a stray bullet in the 400 block of Bloom St.
Donte White, 26, is charged in that shooting and facing three counts of attempted first-degree murder.
Homicide Det. Frank Miller testified Thursday that White was friends with Angelo "Razor" Fitzgerald, who Berry is accused of gunning down in 2011. That case is pending and set for trial in June.
A cousin of White testified that the shooting of Berry was revenge for Fitzgerald's death. The cousin said she overheard White and a friend bragging about the shooting.
"They said they finally got them n----s back for killing Razor," she testified. "They said they hit a little boy, and didn't mean to do it."
The cousin, who admitted that she has a grudge against White and did not want him staying at her house, told police the next day what she had allegedly heard. She said she had seen White wrapping up a gun to hide in the basement, but police never found the weapon.
As she testified, White showed a wide grin and repeatedly shook his head.
Det. Joseph Dobry, who investigated the triple shooting, said Berry was uncooperative but witnesses said the gunman had been wearing an orange shirt. A man arrested on a marijuana charge and debriefed by detectives said White was the shooter, and picked him out of a photo lineup.
Police executed a search warrant on the home of White's girlfriend, in Dundalk, and found an orange shirt.
White told police he had been helping his girlfriend move into the home at the time of the shooting, Dobry said.