Friend remembers slain gang intervention worker

Amer-I-Can Community News

Tommie "T-Top" Rivers

Last Sunday night, gang intervention worker Ronald "Looney" Barron left a bar with his girlfriend when he noticed a tagger on West Pico Boulevard. Barron confronted the tagger, who shot and killed him. He was 40-years-old.

Tommie "T Top" Rivers was one of Barron's closest friends. Rivers said he first met Barron when he was about 7-years-old -- the two grew up playing football and baseball together.

But they were from two different neighborhoods, neighborhoods that didn't get along. The two men didn't speak for about 20 years, until they both wound up behind bars.

Rivers says when they were released from prison, they both joined the Amer-I-Can program, started by NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown. Rivers said the program completely changed their lives and set them on a different track.

"Then we went on to bring our two rival neighborhoods together," says Rivers. "For the past nine years, my neighborhood along with his and about 15 others, Bloods and Crips haven't been warring."

Barron had become a respected anti-gang counselors. Relatives say he dedicated his time to kids much like the 16-year-old who has since been charged with Barron's shooting.

Rivers wasn't with his best friend when he confronted the tagger, but says he can imagine what went through his mind. "I think it would make him feel like it [tagging] goes against what he stood for," he says.

Rivers believes tagging often leads to much bigger crimes.

Recently the two men had been working at several schools, trying to help spread what Rivers calls the right mind-set. He says Ronald Barron always stayed positive and optimistic around kids, no matter what the situation. "He was consistent when so much of their lives is inconsistent."

Barron is survived by two children, a 22-year-old son about to graduate college, and a daughter, 10.