“Poverty is the mother of crime.”
Marcus Aurelius
“See, that’s what I don’t get about the drug thing. Why can’t you sell the shit and walk the fuck away? You know what I mean? Everything else in this country gets sold without people shooting each other behind it. In the Terrace, it’s one body after another.”
James McNulty, The Wire
“An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.”
Martin Luther

Overlooked, underappreciated, and even ignored, those who live on the street have their own culture, their own lifestyle and deal with the harsh lot they have been dealt in their own, unique way. Disenfranchised and jaded, insane and ill, those who dwell beneath the underbelly of a city are a force to be reckoned with. Contacts and allies can be found in the darkest of alleys and poorest of slums. Those who can be used by characters include: gang members, the homeless, street performers, petty criminals, prostitutes and the forgotten—this includes veterans and those cast out of mental wards.

Background Dots	Level of Influence
X	Non-initiated hopeful
•	New blood
••	Rank and file
•••	Local gang leader
••••	Cartel lieutenant, regional enforcer
•••••	Cartel leader

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Street Allies by Gang

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Street Influence ••••

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Ernesto “The White Devil” Lopez

An emissary from the Corporation (Cuban Mafia), Ernesto is in New Orleans to reach out to existing criminal enterprises and, to a less extent, to the legitimate business groups that might have an interest in a firmer working arrangement with the Corporation given the ongoing normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States. He’s smooth, suave, and highly confident in himself both socially and physically. Rumors out of Cuba tell the story of a man of brutal drive efficiency that clawed his way into the upper echelon of power with only his wits, his charm, and his ruthlessness, but even they may have undersold the man known in Cuba as the “White Devil” (because of his trademark white suits). Comfortable with firearms, baseball bats, and pliers as the situation requires, but also capable of conducting himself with decorum and respect. Near legend tells that he carved his way from the worst slums of Havana, though Ernesto rarely speaks of his past. Has very few assets on the ground himself, but some ties to the existing underworld in New Orleans.

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Carnell Abernathy

Born: 1988
Family: The Abernathys
Street kid and gangbanger who used a combination of financial aid and drug profits to obtain degrees in business and pre-law. Subsequently returned to the underworld with the goal of becoming more than just muscle; now runs the BloodHound Gangstaz, one of the Big Easy’s largest gangs. Equally at home wearing Armani or gang colors, he can shift flawlessly from perfect English to street slang.

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Street Influence •••

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Corey “Da Chief” Expose

Born: 1979
Family: The Exposes
Leader of the Cut-Throat-City Snake Gang with his younger brother Ronald “Ryulo” Expose, a major drug ring in CTC (i.e., Cross the Canal, aka Cut-Throat-City) in the lower Ninth Ward. Currently serving in the Farm, i.e., the Louisiana State Penitentiary. They, and seven of their crew, got busted in a major racketeering charge and drug dealing sting. Fancied himself a bokor, but he was a bad one in both ways.

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Diego Carlos Rivera

Leader of the Cottonmouths gang in Terrytown.

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Dontell “Big Dawg” “Papa Spenda” Levois

Born: 1984
Deceased: 2016 (age 32)
Family: The Levoises
Leads gang of car-boosters in the lower Ninth Ward, known as the Lil’ Red RidaHoodz. Former low-budget porn “star” and frequent patron of the ward’s plentiful, but cheap streetwalkers. Wears gold-plated grillz caps that spell his street-name. Alleged informant of the NOPD, earning him his other behind his back sobriquet: “Tell-Tell.” Recently took over the Rosebush Apartments and prostitution ring of the now-deceased Papa Slinga. Deceased himself as of 2016, following his arrest and a jail fight in Orleans Parish Prison.

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Malcom “Slims” Warfield

Gang kid who nearly died on the roof of his flooded house during Hurricane Katrina. Claims to have seen Death himself and been spared the reaper’s scythe. Now runs the Grim Reapers, one of the Ninth Ward’s more brutal gangs. They require every member to have survived a near-death experience. If a would-be member hasn’t already, the gang is all-too willing to engineer one, with frequently and predictably fatal results. To get around this effective cap on their numbers, they often “subcontract” to less prominent gangs whose members hope to someday join the Reapers.

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Papa Slinga

Local pimp in the lower Ninth Ward who operates out of the Rosebush Apartments, a frequently raided crackhouse-slum. “Employer” of Desire and Crystal Hampton. Deceased as of 2015.

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Roberto ‘Gamberro’ Vaccaro

Sicilian-Honduran de facto soldato serving a mafioso capo allied with the international Vaccaro dynasty. Roberto is an arrogant adolescent who runs a racially diverse street gang based out of the French Quarter, Reyes de Hielo (also known as the Ice Kings), that has connections to Honduran-US drug smugglers, the Mexican Los Zetas cartel, and domestic cocaine dealers.

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Sam “T-Bone” Lavit

Born: 1985
Family: The Lavits
Smokey’s nephew and president of the Halfways, a biker gang based in Mid-City. He supplies most of the drugs in the Mid-City and University area. Known to be loud and brash, and most suspect that his VP is the one who really runs things.

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Street Influence ••

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Andre Sandoval

Leader of the Nightwalkers gang who took a bullet to the spine from a firefight some years back. Now confined to a wheelchair and wrestles with bouts of depression over “being useless.” His girlfriend Gracie Mae Ramirez acts as his proxy and basically runs the gang in his stead. Many wonder how long that arrangement is going to last in Central City’s hard streets.

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Clarence “Doc Chops” Levois

Born: 1970
Family: The Levoises
Maternal uncle of Dontell Levois and Francis Levois. Runs a salvage yard/auto repair shop in the lower Ninth Ward that serves as the illicit chop-shop for the RidaHoodz. Takes pity on his youngest nephew Mercurial Fernandez and sometimes asks him to draw car designs for his shop.

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Dauntay “Showerz” Rice

Member of the RidaHoodz. Makes and sells low-budget porno mags and videos, including those that appeal to his salirophilia. Leaves boosting cars to the other gang-members, and handles the books instead, using his “legitimate” company to launder the money they make from jacking and chopping vehicles.

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Dionisio “T-Bang” Melgara

An original Miskitu member of Roberto’s cocaine ring who accompanied him during his stowaway international escape. Avid ‘sampler’ of the gang’s snowy product. Simultaneously paranoid about cops, ICE, gnomes, ghosts, and lobster aliens, although he enjoys outwitting the police with an almost religious fervor (gnomes are impossible to outwit). When not nigh-ODing on cocaine, he’s a remarkably good drive-by shooter and sniper, as he was one of the Contra’s child soldiers and killed more men than most Army Rangers before he grew his first pubic hair. He used to dream of using drug money to free his people, but he’s since settled for dreaming of snorting mountains of cocaine and having sex with a giant rabbit goddess–or at least crack whores he forces to dress up in abandoned mall Easter Bunny costumes.

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Dusty “Flash” Brown

Dusty is a street arms dealer that sells mostly stolen weapons to small time crooks bought from small time crooks. Born to a single mother, he dropped out of high school in his senior year mostly in pursuit of ‘cred’ rather than due to a real hatred of learning or struggle with academics. Indeed, Dusty is actually quite intelligent: smart enough to avoid getting picked up for the array of illegal activities he engages in, to avoid getting shot with his own merchandise, and to avoid getting shot for selling to the wrong person. He has good instincts and an ear to the street that keeps him in the loop on what’s going on, along with a day job at a local jiffy lube that helps to keep him off the radar of the police (and lets him hand off merchandise on the sly as needed). Though unmarried, Dusty tries to remain in the lives of his two young children (by two different women) as much as possible, and supports both women for the good of the boys as needed. For his part, Dusty plays down his intelligence and any goodliness in favor of street cred needed to make his money. Goes by the name ‘Flash’ on the street. Has no remorse for selling weapons that often result in lost lives, though he goes out of his way to avoid selling to various gangs and organizations, to avoid stepping on toes.

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D’angelo “Murda-Cent” Turcotte

Member of the RidaHoodz. Currently incarcerated in the Farm. His street name comes from his gang’s opinion that he would murder anybody for a penny.

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Edward “Big Eddie” Patterson

Topping 350 lbs, “Big Eddie” was a college football player at LSU before a knee injury ended his shot at the pros. Abandoned by his friends and tossed out by the school, officially for failing grades and drug use (apparently as a nonathlete he was expected to attend class and it wasn’t ok for him to smoke in front of people anymore), he landed back in the slums of New Orleans with nothing but a chip on his shoulder. That, combined with the questionable star power as a star college athlete back home proved to be enough to get him started as the small-time drug dealer he is today. Twice arrested, once shot, but never successfully robbed, he built a reputation as safe to approach for college kids due to his minor celebrity, and now slings a fair amount of the local drug scene to spoiled white kids he despises on behalf of Carnell.

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Francis “Fizzy” Levois

Born: 1987
Deceased: 2016 (age 27)
Family: The Levoises
Founding member of the RidaHoodz, cousin of Dontell, and older brother to Mercurial “Mouse” Fernandez. Recently released from the Farm. His pull and leadership has suffered from his absence. He hopes to regain it. Deceased as of 2016, following his arrest and a jail fight in Orleans Parish Prison.

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Gracie Mae Ramirez

Long-time girlfriend of Andre Sandoval, the titular leader of the Nightwalkers. She has largely run the gang since her boyfriend’s paralysis. She’s seemed to do a good job of things, but the strain of also taking care of the disabled and frequently depressed Sandoval seems to be wearing on their relationship.

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JayPee “Manila Ice” Tupas

A Filipino wannabe b-boy and rapper descended from the city’s last Filipino consulate general. His more immediate ancestors abandoned drying shrimp in the lower French Quarter to build a chain of dry cleaners they manage from Bayou St. John. When not locking delinquent debtors in freezers, selling expired credit card numbers, or otherwise assisting the Ice Kings, JayPee spends his time posting crappy Spanglish rap and dance videos on his MeVid channel and/or lambasting Dougy Two-Toes’ social media posts (as the two used to be friends but had a bad falling out over something neither can right remember).

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Jermaine Landreneau

Born: 1985
Deceased: 2007 (age 22)
Family: The Landreneaus
Son of Ronald “Ron” Landreneau, cousin to Emmett Delacroix, and former member of the BloodHound Gangstaz. Largely neglected by his father, who considered himself generous enough for paying child support to his mother after knocking her up. Treated by Ron more like a business associate than a son, who would make use of his gang ties for various criminal purposes (such as purchasing drugs and beating up “problematic” film workers). A sometime rival with Carnell Abernathy, Jermaine might well have gone on to lead the gang had it not been for his murder in 2007 at his cousin’s hands.

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Nicholas “Nicky” Bayer

VP of the Halfways. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he’s been VP for many years, despite outliving two presidents. Although known for his violent outbursts, he seems to be a competent adviser and many suspect he runs much of the gang behind the scenes.

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Peter “Smokey” Lavit

Born: 1976
Family: The Lavits
Treasurer of the Halfways and T-Bone’s uncle. Despite his disheveled exterior, Smokey is probably the most highly educated member of the gang, hence why he is responsible for their finances. Were it not for his patched jacket and beard, his jovial demeanor would make it easy to forget he’s a gang member.

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Richard “Ricky” Owen

Former bouncer at Danny’s. Big, burly and bearded, Ricky fit right in with the clientele. Although not a member of any gang, he had no problem dealing with any problems that would arise, and was well-respected by the patrons. Since Danny’s burned down, he has moved on and found employment at another bar.

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Ronald “Ryulo” Expose

Born: 1982
Family: The Exposes
Younger brother to Corey Expose, also leading member in the Cut-Throat City Snake Gang. Currently serving in the Farm.

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Sarah “Sadie” Brookes

Former prostitute who started dating Halfways VP Nicky in the 80’s. Not a full member of the gang, since rules prohibit females from joining. However, as a constant companion at Nicky’s side she is just as knowledgeable as any of the top ranks.

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Steven “Nix” McKibbon

Sergeant-at-arms of the Halfways and a Gulf War veteran. He quickly rose up in the ranks due to his reputation for committing unconscionable acts without hesitation or question.

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Street Influence •

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Anastasia (real name unknown)

Exotic dancer at the Barely Legal, a strip club owned by Cash Money Mouton. Somewhat short for a stripper but no less enthusiastic, she cajoled Emmett “Em” Delacroix into a private lap dance, round of Jamesons, and brief tryst that indirectly led to his violent altercation with Cash Money. Deceased as of 2015 following her suicide.

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Chaz Chance

Seventeen-year-old high school dropout, French Quarter pickpocket, and bootleg DVD salesman. Not particularly clever or winsome, but persistent and hard-working. Lean and hungry looking, with a mild but persistent case of ache. Actually lives in Mid-City with his drug addict mother and three younger siblings, and spends most of the money he makes paying for basic needs like food, rent, water, and power, as his mother even trades their EBT for crack and booze. Deeply conflicted what he does, but doesn’t see another way to care for his family. Quite religious, Chaz was a practicing Catholic until his father died and he was forced to drop out to help support his family, at which point his church attendance dwindled. Chaz knows he doesn’t have much of a future, but hopes that he can keep the family afloat, by any means necessary, long enough for his siblings to get out of the house before social services swoops in or they end up on the street.

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Crystal Hampton

Prostitute employed by Papa Slinga in the lower Ninth. Friends with Desire and devout Vodouisant. Recently deceased.

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Damien Price

Born: 1981
Family: The McGinnes
Father of Collin McGinnes, currently serving time in Angola for domestic violence and drug possession. Knows that his son has “the Gift” and would exploit that talent to his own ends. Up for parole.

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Darlene “Little Miss Milk Jugs” Maybury

Born: 1979
A swimsuit model gone past her prime, Darlene adopted the persona of Little Miss Milk Jugs in 2014 to make ends meet as a street performer. She took her performance—and alcohol consumption—a little too far and spent several years in Orleans Parish Prison for public indecency, crude acts in public, and three counts of assaulting a peace officer. (A plea deal kept her out of the Farm, but the slow pace of the justice system wound up incarcerating her past the parish jail’s maximum one-year sentence anyway.) Recently released and turned back to street performing.

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Desire

Young prostitute who formerly worked for Papa Slinga, now the RidaHoodz, in the lower Ninth. Friend of slain prostitute Crystal Hampton, later nearly killed by Crystal’s murderer. Real middle name of Tavena.

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Jasmine “Poppy” Curry

Nineteen-year-old prostitute who formerly worked for Papa Slinga, now the RidaHoodz, but on the side is known to sell minor information to anyone but the police—a habit that will probably get her killed sooner rather than later. The product of a broken home, her father was killed by the NOPD when she was seven, and her mother ended up in jail before she was nine. Raised by the foster system she never made it through high school. Surprisingly not a drug addict, though she does compulsively gamble away her meager earnings on penny slot machines.

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Jason St. George

Born: 1990
Family: The St. Georges
Convicted pedophile, mugger, drug addict, and now drifter on the streets, Jason had every opportunity to succeed despite the troubled childhood he came from. Mary St. George adopted him when he was young and brought him into a loving household with brothers and sisters who embraced him as their own. Unfortunately for Jason, he turned from that path. Always slightly off, his future went completely off the rails when he was arrested after molesting a two-year-old girl in a Walmart bathroom. Subsequent raids on his college dorm room found a stash of explicitly violent child pornography. Jason subsequently spent more than four years in prison related to those charges even after pleading them down. He was caught in the system after his release and forced into chemical castration. It took less than three months after that for him to fail off the grid entirely, violating his parole and becoming just another junkie drifter on the city’s mean streets. He has remained there since early 2015, subsisting through a combination of begging and violence. White, nearly 6’0" tall, with ratty black hair and a scraggly beard.

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Jerome “Spinnerz” Lyons

Member of the RidaHoodz. Known for his kleptomaniac obsession with hubcaps, particularly spinners.

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J’Nelle “BJz” Seguin

Member of the RidaHoodz. Pornstar-prostitute and marginal girlfriend of Dauntay.

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Keshaun Broussard

Born: 1996
Family: The Broussards
19-year-old currently serving in Orleans Parish Prison for setting a neighbor’s dog on fire. Like his younger brother Batiste, Keshaun grew up breaking, tagging, and running around with a cut-krewe. Unlike his brother, Keshaun was never that good with a blade and was lucky to lose only a few fingers before his fifteenth birthday. He likely would have lost a lot more if he hadn’t spent most of his adolescence in juvenile detention centers for vandalism, truancy, possession charges, and myriad other probation violations. Shortly after his last release, he and some other petty gangbangers began shaking down disabled neighbors for their social security checks. Yet, after mouthing off to one of his elderly victims, Keshaun was mauled by the woman’s pit-bull (his compatriots of course bolted and abandoned him). In retaliation, Keshaun returned the next day with a super-soaker filled with lighter fuel, hosed down the dog through its chain-linked fence, and then threw lit-matches at it. Livid, the dog’s owner violated the usual creed of never calling the cops. Keshaun might have dodged the police, but he decided to come back the next day and shake down the old lady for her social security check just as the cops arrived to take her statement.

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Leon ‘Cap’ Kosiński

The Ice Kings’ newest member, Leon is a Polish-American runaway from Chicago’s Portage Park. After one too many half-smoked roaches under Leon’s bed and one too many visits from his school truancy officer, Leon’s father had planned to ship Leon off to a wilderness reform camp in Wisconsin. Leon retaliated by filling a backpack with his dead mother’s jewelry, his dad’s beer cans, a laptop, and some clothes, and using his girlfriend’s credit card to buy a one-way Amtrak ticket to the farthest single-train stop he could find: New Orleans. Unsure of what to do next, he visited the French Quarter, where he had the misfortune of crossing paths with the Ice Kings. By the time he realized what he had gotten himself into, he knew his chances of leaving–alive–are slim. Presently, he spends his time wavering between trying to keep his head, hands, and nose clean to better concoct a smart exit strategy and just free-fall diving into the gang’s soul-killing violence, drugs, sex, and criminal excesses. Until committing to either path, he conspicuously avoids the local exotic cuisine for eating at bland drive-through chains (Hallahan’s is his favorite) and complains, privately if not publicly, about the constant, insufferable heat, humidity, and bugs.

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Malcolm Flynn

Born: 1994
Family: The Flynns
College dropout, drug addict, and now convicted felon, Malcolm Flynn’s religious upbringing seems to have done little to affect the course of his life. Despite promising grades in high school, Malcolm ran wild at LSU and eventually fell in with the wrong crowd. Partying led to drug use, which led to harder drugs, and finally landed him on the crack pipe. After that, nothing else mattered. Popped for breaking and entering a year ago after he broke into his parents’ home to steal his mother’s jewelry and sentenced to eighteen months. His father testified against him, and neither he nor his mother have visited him in prison, though his sister has.

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Michael “Mickey” “Gotcha Shoes” Zyers

A long-time but small-time crook, Mickey Zyers is pickpocket, fencer, con artist, and perennial ne’er-do-well who’s tried his hand at every vice the Big Easy has to offer short of murder and armed robbery—and has almost certainly only avoided the last two out of cowardice rather than principle. He’s never lasted for very long at anything. In and out of Orleans Parish Prison since he was a youth, the 30-something thief was fleecing French Quarter tourists with shell games and other petty cons last anyone heard. Mickey is also a masochist who takes sexual pleasure in his own pain: he’s been sometimes known to deliberately botch criminal jobs just so he can get beaten up and abused by angry marks. This has granted him a peculiar immunity to the NOPD’s worst cruelties, who no longer even beat him up when they arrest him. They know he “just gets off to it.”

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Reggie Lucha

Shifty real estate flipper who lost everything between Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 Financial Crisis. He ended up sitting on a dozen ruined homes, and was subsequently muscled by Carnell Abernathy into “providing” several of those homes as drug dens and other houses of ill repute in exchange for marginal financial aid. Reggie is a frumpy-looking overweight middle-aged man who wears cheap clothing, and a coward with clipped nuts who is uncomfortable with illegal acts and terrified of prison—but even more terrified of Carnell.

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Tyronne “TWOC” Pitt

Member of the RidaHoodz. His preferred M.O. for car theft is Taken Without Owners’ Consent (TWOC), usually by a combination of pickpocketing, breaking and entering, and slipping roofies to unsuspecting car-owners.

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Street Influence 0

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Latoya and La’trice Broussard

Born: 2005
Family: The Broussards
10-year-old twin daughters and local Double Dutch block-queens. The inseparable pair acts as regular look-outs for their family and neighbors, alerting them to approaching police, social workers, and rival gangs with different skipping rhymes. When not jumping ropes or practicing new braids on each other and their shared doll, the girls torment their immediate and extended family with generally harmless pranks such as placing clear plastic wrap across toilet bowls, replacing Oreo icing with toothpaste, and stuffing cream cheese into deodorant sticks. In the past, the miscreants particularly enjoyed using their identical features to trick teachers and strangers. However, such schemes became impossible after a rival cut-thug slashed Latoya across the face, severing her left ear and leaving her permanently scarred. Far less visible is the spiritual wound they share: the twins were once triplets, but their sister Latifah drowned in Katrina’s floodwaters. Although only a few months old during the time of their sister’s death, the twins speak of her often as if she was alive. Most simply attribute such talk as referring to the girl’s doll (who is named Latifah), but some wonder whether the dead girl’s spirit might haunt her still-living sisters.

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Jaquann “Jelly-Belly” Broussard

Born: 2011
Family: The Broussards
6-year-old, 98-lb autistic son whose morbid obesity and odd mannerisms make him a frequent joke among his kin and neighbors. His classmates previously teased him with similar abandon until he sat on one of his tormentors and would have asphyxiated him if Jaquann hadn’t been pried off by two teachers. Due to the incident and Jaquann’s repeated theft of his classmates’ lunches, the corpulent kindergartener was expelled. Since then, Jaquann has been “homeschooled,” which in reality means he has been left to fend for himself during the day, gorging on potato chips, peanut butter, or whatever else he can find with his pudgy fingers. His aunt tried locking the fridge, but Jaquann bypassed the lock by breaking the door’s hinges. To say that the obese child has interests other than binging on food and TV would be nice, but sadly fraudulent.

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Character Portal

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