Victim’s Dad: Crips Had ​“Grip” In Their Sights

The gun didn’t fire the first time a would-be Crip pulled the trigger on Tyrell Trimble. The second time, Trimble lost his life.

So says Trimble’s father.

The second time the trigger was pulled was Monday just before 1 p.m. A masked man opened fire on Trimble outside a ​“hot spot” Stop & Shop plaza laundromat at the corner of Elm and Kensington Street, where Trimble regularly hung out. Trimble, known by his nickname ​“Grip,” was pronounced dead soon after at the hospital. He was 20 years old. His homicide had the trappings of a planned assassination.

Trimble’s dad, Eddie Trimble, said he believes that’s what it was. He said he believes the shooting was the latest in a years-long series of conflicts between members of the Grape Street Crips gang and his son, who was identified (incorrectly, according to dad) as part of the ​“Tre” Bloods.

Eddie Trimble spoke passionately about his son’s homicide — and about his own efforts as a former crack dealer turned straight working man to raise his children right — in an interview Wednesday night outside his home on Davenport Avenue in the Hill neighborhood.

“He got mixed up with the wrong crowd, with the wrong friends” since graduating last year from the school system’s Adult Basic Ed program, Eddie said of his son.

One of Tyrell Trimble’s friends was named Eric Evans. Evans got in trouble. He’d once been shot on Kensington Street. Another time he got shot after engaging in a beef with other young men the night of Sept. 19, 2010; the beef ended with a spray of bullets outside Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School on College Street.

Evans moved in with the Trimbles. This past March 25, Evans and Tyrell Trimble were installing a sound system in the trunk of a car parked in the driveway of the Davenport Avenue house where the Trimbles rent a second-floor apartment. An armed man walked up to them and started shooting. He hit Evans three times (or more, depending on varying versions). Police arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the shooting.

Eddie said one part of that story didn’t get reported in the press: That the gunman also pointed a gun right at Tyrell’s head. He pulled the trigger, Eddie said. The gun did not fire.

The Trimbles used to live across town on Beers Street in the Dwight Kensington neighborhood dominated by the Tre Bloods gang. Eddie insisted his son never belonged to the gang. But he hung out with friends in the area. He and the friends were thus marked as ​“Tre,” a group of young people perpetually in conflict with the Hill-based Grape Street Crips.

Four years ago a lender foreclosed on the Trimbles’ landlord’s house. The Trimbles had to move. They crossed town to Davenport Avenue. Immediately the neighborhood Crips targeted Tyrell as a Tre member and would regularly attack him on the street, according to Eddie.

The day of the March shooting, Eddie said, an aspiring Crip was given an initiation challenge: A gang member pointed to Tyrell and Evans working on the car and told him to shoot them. So he went over and started firing, according to Eddie. (That account could not be independently verified.)

His son’s homicide Tuesday was just the latest episode in that never-ending string of incidents, Eddie said Wednesday evening.

Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso said Wednesday that it’s too early to draw conclusions about who killed Tyrell or why. The investigation remains at a preliminary stage, he said. Police have been pursuing a number of people whose names have ​“come up” in the homicide but at this point are not ​“close to a warrant for anybody,” Generoso said. ​“Some [people] say it’s gang-related; some say it’s not.” Police ask anyone with information about either incident to call them at (203) 946‑6304.

Trying To ​“Break The Cycle”

Adding to the grief of losing Tyrell, Eddie said, was the effort he was making to keep his son off the streets.

Eddie (pictured above) was trying to make up for his, and his own father’s, past sins, he said.

“In the black community, there’s not a lot of kids with a father,” said Eddie, who’s black. ​“I wanted to break the cycle of what my father done to me.”

Eddie, who’s 50, grew up in the Hill. He said his father left the family when Eddie was 5. Eddie wouldn’t see his father again for another 45 years.

Eddie became a crack dealer. He dealt on Lilac Street in Newhallville. ​“I chose the streets,” he said. ​“I made a mistake.”

He paid for the mistake: Police arrested him in 1992. He spent two years in Gates Correctional Institution in Niantic. He paid an even bigger price, he said, when he got out and his children’s grandmother had custody of them. The grandmother wouldn’t relinquish custody to Eddie.

Eddie went to court seeking custody. ​“I had urines taken for five years to get my kids back,” he said. Eventually the grandmother died; he got custody.

He also got a job. And he tried to show his kids that honest work makes more sense than the streets, he said. For the last 11 years he has been a night supervisor at Minore’s Market on Whalley.

“Eleven years, and this was my third day off,” he claimed to explain why he wasn’t at Minore’s Wednesday night, as he dealt with his son’s death.

He said he kept close watch on Tyrell. He would go through his room when he wasn’t home; he concluded based on that that his son was not involved in the drug trade, he said.

A police officer familiar with the Trimbles called Eddie ​“a hard-working man who tried to keep his family in line.”

But Tyrell ​“lost focus,” according to Eddie. After graduation from Adult Ed, Tyrell never landed a job. Eddie said he tried to get his son to enlist in the Army. Instead Tyrell hung out on the streets. (Tyrell’s brother Eddie Jr. drifted, too, racking up gun and drug convictions over the past four years.)

Last July brought Tyrell a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge. In January police arrested Tyrell for violating a protective order. On March 10 they arrested Tyrell again along with a friend when they ran from the cops at Whalley Avenue and Argonne Street; the friend had been spotted carrying a gun. The cops charged Tyrell with resisting arrest.

After the March 25 encounter with the gun that didn’t fire, Tyrell started carrying his own gun, Eddie said. For protection, Eddie said.

For all the trouble Tyrell got in, police in the neighborhood remembered him as polite and cooperative. Friends kept vigil throughout Wednesday at the homicide scene at Elm and Kensington. They recalled Tyrell as a fun, friendly, ​“good person.”

“He was too young to die,” one young woman said.