Robert Kinlaw is dead! Can the Truce Last?

When the 7Th and O Crew agreed to a truce with the 5Th and O Crew last May with our cameras rolling, everyone knew that it would be a fragile truce, held together only by the words and muscles of the ex-offenders who had brought the warring factions together.



Robert Kinlaw Junior, a 34 year old ex-con with a long history of violence and crime had decided that "enough is enough". Kinlaw, known as "Noochie" in the Shaw neighborhoods was a wide as he was tall.



I'm thinking as I interviewed him and the others that "this man could break my neck with his bare hands if he wanted". But Kinlaw was there as a peace advocate and the younger crew members were there to listen and to participate...even if they had no intentions of helping keep the peace.


Robert Kinlaw Junior died just over two weeks ago. Not from a bullet; but from a heart attack in a Convenience store. Today everyone is asking "will the peace hold"? There had been about 40 shootings in the months before the treaty was signed. Only one after that. Now who knows?


The gun play between the 7Th and O and 5Th and O Crews dated back so long, that most gang members who talked with me couldn't recall how it all began.


The Alliance of Concerned Men, Peaceaholics and Scripture Cathedral Church helped forge the peace; but everyone understood that it was the men like Kinlaw, ex-offenders with street credibility among the young gang bangers who made it work.


I'm including the moving TV report that aired on Nine News Now last May. In it you will see and hear Robert Kinlaw talking about why the truce must last. Kinlaw is gone but his words must never die.


Click here to see the video