A Bloody Rite

Elk

hart, Ind., prides itself on being the recreational-vehicle capital of the world. It's not a place that sees a lot of drive-by shootings. So the city was surprised and saddened on Nov. 17, when Sasezley Richardson, 19, was shot in the head as he strolled through a quiet neighborhood toward his girlfriend's house. He was left bleeding on the side of the road--beside a bundle of diapers he had been carrying for his girlfriend's baby. He died three days later.

Even more unsettling was the twist the case took last week, when prosecutors charged two white teenagers with the murder and said they had targeted Richardson, a stranger to them, because he was black. The Elkhart Truth reported that one suspect, Jason Powell, 19, had told friends he needed to kill a black person to earn a badge of honor in the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist gang he hoped to join. An Elkhart city councilman, Arvis Dawson, told TIME he had confirmed that report in conversations with police and prosecutors. Neither Powell nor his co-defendant, Alex Witmer, 18, made any comment in court or through their lawyers. A judge entered a plea of not guilty on their behalf.

Powell, who reportedly showed up for his factory job with a freshly shaved head the morning after the shooting, doesn't have a criminal history. Councilman Dawson, who teaches at Westside Middle School, where Witmer was once a student, says Witmer "was always making racist remarks to other students. The word nigger rolled off his lips regularly." Witmer, who police say was driving the car as Powell fired on Richardson, was released in June after serving time in juvenile facilities for a handgun offense. "Everybody is going to have a different view of Alex," said a Witmer relative, who declined to be identified. "But it's family, so we're going to defend him. It's unconditional love."