Neighbors say feud led to Hill District shooting

Sinurae Williams banged on her aunt's door in the Bedford Dwellings housing project in the Hill District on Thursday afternoon, but no one answered.

She stood confused next to the triangular front yard - a murder scene of grass matted with blood and littered with plastic gloves and medical garbage left behind by paramedics. She wondered where her family was.

'My mom got shot in the head and she's dead,' said Williams, 21, adopted daughter of shooting victim Carmen Collins. 'I don't know how my mom got into it. I don't know how it started. How it ended, I know.'

When police responded to shots fired Wednesday night at Bedford Avenue and Whiteside Road, they found Collins struggling with Thomasina Brown, 44. Collins, of the North Side, had apparently been visiting the home of her sister, Janice Collins, 38, who lived at Bedford Dwellings near Brown but was in jail during the shooting.

Police tried to separate the two, but Brown pushed Carmen Collins away and shot her in the face, killing her, officers said. Two officers shot Brown, who died at the scene.

Collins' niece, Lakeysha 'Twinkle' Collins, 27, was already lying on the ground, shot in the head. She had been in critical condition at UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, but hospital officials would not release her condition yesterday.

Carmen Collins, 37, died yesterday morning at Mercy Hospital, Uptown.

Neighbors said the shooting was precipitated by a yearlong feud over bickering children that included a fistfight and stabbing last summer.

'It exploded,' said Richard 'Mr. Dickey' Felton, 61, a neighbor who watched from his kitchen window as weekly shouting matches between Collins family members and Joyce Fuller, 44, and Lawanda Wilks, 22, relatives of Brown, escalated to violence.

'I always told my wife this is going to end in a shooting,' he said. 'It was something real stupid, kids playing rough and they went home and told their mothers. Instead of the mothers laughing it off, they carried it a little too far.'

Carmen Collins lived in the Northview Heights apartment complex on the North Side. She worked at Sky Vue Terrace, a North Side nursing home.

The home's administrator, Michael McCann, said Collins worked there as a nursing assistant from 1986-92 and was hired again last year.

'She was hard-working, dedicated, kind of fun-loving,' McCann said.

He said Collins occasionally missed work to care for another daughter, 4, who has severe asthma.

'It's tough, losing someone you work with every day,' McCann said. 'She left my office (Wednesday) and 4 &*#189; hours later she's shot to death. It's kind of devastating.'

Robin Rice, 39, of Homewood, a friend who grew up with Carmen Collins, visited the shooting scene yesterday.

'I went to school with Carmen. She wasn't a violent person,' said Rice, who graduated with Collins from Perry High School on the North Side. 'She was a peacemaker. She had a lot of friends.'

Funeral arrangements for Collins are being handled by the O'Dell Robinson Jr. Funeral Home on the North Side. No visitation or services had been set.

Brown had been a file clerk at UPMC South Hills Home Healthcare, a UPMC spokeswoman said.

Her sister, Bertha Burell of Duquesne, said Brown had two sons, Cecil, 25, and Michael Foreman, and a daughter, Danielle, 14, with whom she lived on Bedford Avenue.

'She didn't bother anybody,' Burell said. 'She loved life.'

Funeral arrangements for Brown are being handled by the Samuel J. Jones Funeral Home in the Hill District. No services had been set.

Marc Lukasiak can be reached at mlukasiak@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7939.