The Death of Bang Mai

Here is the account of the fight in South Boston that I promised you.  I want to thank Rethy for talking to his friends and providing this for all of us.  I will comment on this in a forthcoming post.

What Happened In South Boston on Sunday Night
By Rethy San

I heard the whole story from a friend who was there at the so-called "blood feud".  His name is Steven Nguyen.  Steven and a couple of his friends and his brothers went down to South Boston to just play basketball.  When Bang Mai heard that they were going to play basketball he, too, went with them.   Bang only went because all his friends were going to play basketball, he didn't know what really was going to happen.

After they had entered the South Boston projects and were shooting some hoops at the basketball court, all of  a sudden a group of white kids were calling one of Bang's friends "chink".   They tried to ignore them because they didn't want trouble.  But that didn't work out so one of the older white kids came up to Bang and his friends and wanted to fight.  The white kids were alot older, like 19.  Bang and his friends were alot younger.

So they did.  The white kid won fighting one of Bang's littler friends.  Bang then punched the white kid, then all the white kids jumped in and so did Bang's friends.  Steven said everything happened so fast and this had become a brawl. 

Afterwards police came and everyone ran away.  After the fight Bang was found bleeding from the nose and mouth.  He was stabbed from the back in the heart (this had happened right after everyone started running).  Steven called the ambulance and waited for a long time.  The police who were  there just stood there and it didn't seem like they wanted to do anything.  Steven stayed with Bang until the ambulance came.  It was about a half an hour until they had arrived. 

At the moment when Bang had been stabbed Steven couldn't really do much, "This all happened so fast.  the fight was about less than 10 seconds" Steven told me.  He also said this had nothing to do with gangs, it had to do with race.