Where did the Gang Member Who Snitched go in Wilmington, Delaware?

“Oh, there are plenty of gang-related shootings, but this was the first I’ve seen against the same set member,” said Wilmington Police Detective Amina Short.

“The shooting took place in a park. It was an execution style case. One right to the back of the head. The kid was seventeen. He would’ve turned eighteen in October, and he would’ve started recruit training in the Marines shortly thereafter. That’s what his mother kept saying. He had dreams of becoming ‘one of the Few’. He got lost in the shuffle, right after hanging with low-lifes.”

Detective Amina walked down the hallway and turned sharply into her glass-walled office, and took a seat behind her desk. Reflecting her fascination with classic muscle cars, the tidy space was decorated with polished replicas of the powerful machines. She drove a deep blue 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454.

“The way he was gunned down before he had a chance to become a leader in this world tugs at your mind. I don’t cry easily, so I didn’t while working on this case either, but I would understand anyone on the force who had. It’s just so sad; he left behind his mother, father and four younger siblings.”

The gang shooting led to a series in the Daily Delaware detailing how in 2012 the Broom Street Killers (BSK) snuffed out one of its former members.

In an interview included in the series, Detective Amina had said, “The victim was attracted to the gang because he felt isolated in school, and his siblings were all much younger. He seemed to be looking for a feeling of belonging. He was a brain but no one wanted to hang with him. The gang reeled him in like cod.”

“Alejandro Dallo made a decision that ended up costing him his life because he was out of the gang.” His Marine recruiter, then Staff Sergeant Rocco Nichols, who was also featured in the series, was similarly shaken by the murder.

“He was a knucklehead,” now Gunnery Sergeant Nichols remembered with a grin. “He had a good mind, though. He kept a book in his back pocket at all times. We did all we could to keep him in the poolee program, but he kept missing the different functions. He essentially fell off the radar,” Nichols responded.

Dallo had tried to keep the news of him become a Marine as quiet as possible. He knew if any of his former BSK members found out he was joining the military, his life would be in danger. Detective Amina continued her recollection of the case, “A badly beaten body was found at eleven o’clock in the morning. It seems Dallo didn’t have a chance. Since that day, we have only caught one of the Broom Street Killers, Dante Tate, but he had an alibi. He wasn’t just in another city at the time, he was in another state. We nabbed him on nearby Harrison Street the following week though, and he became an informant, but we still couldn’t get the rest of them because they’d all fled to other parts of the country by then. After that, the case grew cold. We put Tate away for one year, plus probation for his information, it just wasn’t enough. Damn shame.”

Amina opened a file, and withdrew a document. It was the enlistment papers Dallo completed the day he signed up for the Marine Corps.

“His parents were so proud. He wanted to be a part of anyone, anywhere who could relate to him. For a time, the BSK provided that sense of security and brotherhood. Gunnery Sergeant Nichols was the one who recruited him away from his gang activities one day by showing him the fraternity and positive pathway to success he would find in the military.

“At first he scoffed at me.” Nichols recalled. “I was persistent though. I even drove him down to the recruiting station. Once there, he took the tests, signed up on the spot, and was off to M.E.P.S. [Military Entrance Processing Station]. If I had known everything was going to turn out the way it did, I would’ve been more protective, at least as protective as one person could have been under the circumstances,” Nichols took a long drag of his cigarette, and shook his head sadly.

Back in Detective Amina’s office, she was proudly showing off her captain’s bars from her own time in the Marines.

“I’m proud of my bars. I imagine Dallo would have become a mustang, that is, an enlisted person who becomes an officer. I bet he would have risen higher in the ranks than I did if he’d had the chance.”

Amina gazed at her bars again and repeated, for the second time that day, “Damn shame.”