Kendrik had always imagined that if he were to get shot, it would be by a Cuzz – another Crip assigned to kill him for trying to leave the gang. Not wanting to leave the city, because he had a girlfriend now, he had been lying low and avoiding the parts of the city dominated by the Crips. The day the cops shot him, he had intentionally wandered into Compton, which was Blood territory. The Bloods were a rival gang to the one he had pledged himself to, but because he wore nothing to distinguish himself as a rival, he imagined that he would be safest “sleeping behind the cloak of the sloobs”. But Kendrik was recognized by a foot soldier for the Bloods, a low ranking member who was out “bleeding” (looking for new recruits to join the gang). Kendrik had crossed paths with the man during a conflict that occurred when a group of Bloods were selling narcotics in what Kendrik believed to be Crip territory. The man had parked his car to watch Kendrik, long enough to be sure that Kendrik was who he thought he was. He called a woman he knew and told her to call the police, to report that a man was waving a gun at people, and to describe him and give his location. It was a kind of a “slap back” at the insult of Kendrik daring to be there. He enjoyed the idea of the scare that getting hassled by the police would put into him. He did not imagine that the phone call he initiated would lead to Kendrik’s death.

Six police officers showed up at the scene. When they pulled up both behind and in front of Kendrik, he panicked. They yelled at him to get down on the floor. But while he was doing it, he reached into his pocket for the business card of his probation officer. Having been called to the scene of a man with a gun, they made the assumption when he reached into his pocket that he was reaching for a gun. That Kendrik was unarmed was a fact that they didn’t discover until after the first officer had unloaded two shots, the second had unloaded six, the third had unloaded five and the fourth had unloaded 12.