Sunbelt Import

By Jay Carney.

Charles Triplett, 16, is shot in the back and dies. He was a member of a gang known as the Q Boys. Police charge two members of a rival gang, the Vice Lords, with murder.

Vincent Bailey, 18, gets caught in the middle of an argument between members of a youth gang and other teenagers. A gun is fired, and Bailey dies seven days later.

Timothy ("Peanut") Harris, 19, who belongs to a gang called Down by Law, is charged with the murder of 16-year-old Vashone Jackson, who is believed to have been a member of the Five Percent Nations.

Gang violence, a scourge of ghetto and barrio life in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York for decades, erupts with numbing regularity in America's biggest cities. But these three gang-related murders -- committed in Jackson, Miss., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Atlanta respectively -- mark the emergence across the American South of organized teenage gangs inspired by models in the North and West.

During a decade of tremendous growth, Sunbelt cities attracted millions of people from the depressed urban centers of the North. All the ills of urban ghettos went with the newcomers, and many Southern cities, with their underclass populations suddenly exploding, became ripe environments for gangs to develop and flourish.

Officials in Atlanta have been sensitive about their city's image since the deluge of bad publicity following the plague of child murders from 1979 through mid-'81. Down by Law, Atlanta's largest, best-organized and most violent youth gang, got its start in 1981 as a small group of young teenagers who armed themselves and moved in packs for protection during the scare. In early 1985 they had their first shoot-out with another gang, the Creepers. In the past several months, members have been linked to armed robbery, rape, assault and other crimes. In an intimidating show of strength in February, gang members descended upon the Atlantis Youth Club, situated in a suburban shopping mall. "They were hanging out in the parking lot," said Ernest Marshall, a consultant to the Atlanta Youth Federation. "I saw guns laying on the front seat of the cars. They even had UZIs."

Gang violence has ebbed in Jackson since Charles Triplett was killed, but the calm may prove short-lived. "It will stay quiet until somebody else messes up," said "Cheeseburger," an 18-year-old member of a gang called the Folks. "You know, school starts back. Somebody will bring up Chuck (Triplett), and it's gonna start up." Charles Robinson, director of the Jackson Urban League, first warned city officials about the gang situation more than two years ago, hoping it could be dealt with early. "Right now, they're fighting for turf," he explained. "Once that's settled, they'll establish prostitution and narcotics."

In Chattanooga, it was The Warriors, a movie glorifying the camaraderie and violence of gangs in New York City, that served as the model and namesake for the first local gang. Fourteen others followed, including the Black Angels, a group with all-female membership. The result has been an overload of car-theft cases in juvenile court, as well as Vincent Bailey's murder last October.

To combat the gangs, officials in these Southern cities have established task forces, set up hot lines and offered counseling programs, but violence is still on the rise.

Even so, the situation in the South pales by comparison with that in a city like Chicago. Last week a task force of federal and local law-enforcement officials raided two hideouts of the notorious street gang El Rukn and uncovered an arsenal of sophisticated weapons, including an M72 light antitank weapon. According to a local television station, federal investigators believe El Rukn had offered terrorist services to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

With reporting by Frank S. Washington/Atlanta, with other bureaus