Wal-Martyred

Gang initiates in the Memphis and DeSoto areas must kill a woman and small child in a Wal-Mart.

This rumor about impending murder in the Memphis area began surfacing in e-mail in mid-July 2005. It appears to have begun with statements about gang initiation violence planned to take place at a mall or shopping center that an unidentified woman says she overheard in a bathroom and which she subsequently reported to police in that city. The rumor is unsubstantiated — there is no guarantee the woman who reported it actually did hear such a conversation or, even if she did, that the people she heard speaking weren't playing a practical joke on her.

Major Pat Lovett of the Metro Gang Unit in Memphis, TN, says in her 25 years on the force in Memphis she's never known gang initiation to include murder. Initiations, she says, are more likely to include assault and battery or robbery. "To me, it wouldn't be smart to involve somebody in such a serious crime and then have them arrested and not in the gang anyway," says Lovett.

In a news release, a police spokesman said of the rumor: "While the Memphis police department takes such threats seriously, our investigation has not yet identified any specific gang or any specific victims." In response to the whispers, police in Memphis have stepped up their patrols of shopping center parkinglots.

While the "mother and small child murdered at a Wal-Mart" version is the one circulating in e-mail, another form that the rumor has taken asserts in a more generalized fashion that a woman and a child are to be hurt or killed at a mall or shopping center as part of a gang initiation. Still further forms of the scuttlebutt alter the nature of the threat and leave off mention of a child being included or of any specific store or venue. For example, one unnamed woman who had encountered the chatter said of it in an interview with WPTY-TV in Memphis, "They say either they're [women] going to get raped or murdered; those are exactly his words."--