Former gang member-turned neighborhood activist shot dead in Southeast Raleigh

James Elvin Alston III was in the process of transforming his life from a gang member to an anti-gang neighborhood activist when someone gunned him down in the streets of Southeast Raleigh before dawn Thursday.

The 23-year-old was fatally shot just hours before he planned to speak at a “gang truce” meeting he helped organize.

The day before he was killed, Alston had sent Facebook messages to young community leaders, inviting them to participate in a “gang enlightenment meeting” Thursday night at the Chavis Park Community Center.

The message talked of “getting the community to come together and make peace and stop the violence so we can make Raleigh a better place.”

“He was trying to figure out a way to bring the Crips and Bloods together to better Southeast Raleigh,” said Conyers, who planned to attend the meeting. “I told him his message made my day. I don’t know him. Tonight would have been my first time meeting him.”

His uncle, Tracy Patterson, said Alston’s parents both died of complications from AIDs when he was a toddler. He was raised in the 700 block of Quarry Street, where he was found shot. Alston was found by police with his head against the rear tire of a gray Hyundai Sonata. A barrage of gunfire left two bullet holes in the car and shattered the windows of a blue Mitsubishi parked next to it.

Patterson said Alston had been a member of the Bloods since he was 12 or 13. But he tired of the constant conflict in the neighborhood shared by Bloods members and their rival Crips gang.

“He got tired of beefing with the same guys that he went to school with, that were born and raised in the same neighborhood,” Patterson said.

Alston had just finished the conditions of his parole, said Joshaki Clay, the 22-year-old mother of his three children – sons Zarreon, 1, and Myion, 3, and 5-year-old daughter Zamyia. He had recently purchased a car, moved into a new house and was employed as a construction worker.

Diana Powell is executive director and founder of Justice Served North Carolina, a non-profit youth empowerment program that helps young people re-enter society after they have served time behind bars. Powell served as Alston’s mentor while he was locked up at the Wake County jail. The two became very close.

She called Alston to tell him he had landed the job that he had applied for doing construction work.

“His first day at work he took a selfie with his hard hat on,” she said. “That was my son. That was my baby. All he needed was a little more time. He wanted to make peace, and he wanted to move forward.”

The meeting that Alston helped to organize still went on, but with an added sense of urgency in the wake of his death. More than 100 people, including gang members, community activists, friends and family showed up for the meeting that was held outside in a drizzling rain in front of the Chavis Park carousel. They called Alston a “street general” who had grown tired of black-on-black crime and thought that black people should start policing themselves.

“He said, ‘I’m tired of us killing each other, robbing each other,’” recalled Bernard Mitchell, who works with Project Served North Carolina. “He said he wanted no more shooting, no more thugging, no more hitting hard on each other...he used to say all the time, ‘united we stand, divided we crumble.’”

Clay said Alston was no longer a gang member and set up the meeting to speak with young people who might be lured into gangs.

“He wanted young people out there like he was to know that there were people who cared about them, who loved them,” Clay said.

But she said there were others who questioned Alston’s effort to turn his life around and help others.

“They wanted to know how can he say, ‘don’t do it,’ but at one point in time he was in it,” Clay said.

She said Alston had not spoken of any disputes he may have had recently, but he “still had to watch his back because of his past.”

Despite his troubled life, Alston had tried to speak up for those in trouble.

In 2013, while an inmate at the Wake County jail, he figured prominently as a courtroom witness following the death of another inmate who died when former detention officer Markeith Council slammed him twice on his head.

The incident, which was captured on surveillance video at the detention center, led to Council being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

But on Thursday, there was no one to speak up for Alston.

Just after 4 a.m., police answered a 911 call about someone firing gunshots in the 700 block of Quarry Street and found Alston in the street when they arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Clay said it wasn’t unusual for Alston to be on Quarry Street through the wee hours of the morning.

“He would be out just chilling with his friends,” she said, “doing what they do.”

As of late Thursday, no arrests had been made in the crime.

Anyone with information that might assist the investigation is urged to call Raleigh Crime Stoppers at 919-834-4357.

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 7:26 AM with the headline "Former gang member-turned neighborhood activist shot dead in Southeast Raleigh."