LUMBERTON — On a humid August evening, three weeks after the last murder, Turner Terrace residents and community leaders harmonized, “... troubles don’t last always, no, no, no, no, it won’t last always.”

The group of the public housing project’s residents, religious leaders, and political representatives walked along Spruce Street — where Fred Stuart was shot to death on July 23 — singing, “we shall live in peace someday... we shall overcome.” As they turned onto Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — where Dwight Jordan was killed on June 27 — they sang, “... I will rise from waters deep into the saving arms of God.” They turned onto Holly Street — where Lavel Wheeler was killed on June 20 — and sang, “... weeping may endure for a night, keep the faith, it will be all right.”

The gospel hymns were part of an Aug. 11 vigil intended to “unite against the senseless violence that’s been going on,” Police Chief Mike McNeill said that night.

Aside from the three murders in just more than a month, Turner Terrace residents routinely report robberies, breaking and enterings, car thefts, and other property crimes. Law enforcement officers attribute the crime primarily to outsiders — many of them associated with illegal drugs — loitering in the project, but they say residents must take responsibility for helping police solve crimes and prevent them from happening.

“We want the public to take a stand and say enough is enough, but the people are not by themselves,” McNeill said at the vigil. “We want the people to know the police are with the neighborhood.”

Police have charged four teenage boys with first-degree murder in all three shooting deaths.

Edward Alford, 16, was charged on Thursday with shooting Jordan, 37, during a robbery. Alton McCrae, 16, was charged on July 31 with shooting Stuart, 28, during an argument. Antonio Hawkins, 19, and Harrison Tisdale, 17, in July were charged with shooting Wheeler, 28, over a turf dispute.

Police Lt. Johnny Barnes attributes young teenagers’ involvement in serious crimes to “growing up with very little supervision, very little guidance.

“It’s an issue of the value of life. They’re not putting much value on anybody’s life — the victims or themselves.”

Of the four teenagers, McCrae is the only one who lived inside Turner Terrace. Stuart, the man he is accused of killing, had children there. Police say the other three teens hung around the area because they knew people who lived there, which is why police are frustrated that residents seem reluctant to help.

“The biggest obstacle is getting people to come forward with information they have,” Barnes said. “We know for all of these shootings there’ve been people who’ve seen what happened, but we have trouble getting people to come forward.”

Lumberton Police Department has 82 officers for 23,000 people in the city limits.

“We have to find (witnesses) because they don’t come to us, but that takes a considerable amount of time,” Barnes said. “If the people who actually saw the crime would come forward at the beginning, these crimes would get solved a whole lot quicker.”

Deidra Baker, 23, has lived in Turner Terrace for about four years, and she knew Stuart, the third man murdered there. She said the primary reason Turner Terrace residents don’t report information on crimes is because in the relatively small community, they know or know of relatives, girlfriends, or friends of the offender.

“They don’t want to get involved when it’s family,” she said. “The boys who got caught had relatives there — and friends and girlfriends.”

Police Lt. Ertle Jones manages patrols in Turner Terrace, and said residents there are responsible for their own safety — to a degree.

“The worst thing that happened to law enforcement was ‘CSI,’” he said. “We can’t take a hair follicle and solve a crime in 30 minutes. The only way to solve the crime is with the people.

“The community is our eyes and ears. These (criminals) weren’t dragged in from Mars, they’re here because they know someone.”

Barnes concedes that while investigations would be expedited if residents were forthcoming with information, “people have legitimate reasons for being afraid,” he said. “A lot of these guys don’t care; they’ll shoot up houses and don’t care what they hit.

“It’s hard to prevent someone from shooting someone — that’s very hard to prevent.”

Wheeler, the first murder victim, was from Latta, S.C., and was driving in a car procession when he was shot to death. Jordan was from Fayetteville, and police suspect he may have been there to buy drugs.

Turner Terrace’s 95 apartments and homes were built along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in 1974 as one of 12 public housing communities, ranging from 25 to 100 units, in Lumberton city limits. It is named in honor of the late Rev. E.B. Turner, a longtime city councilman and county commissioner.

About 315 people live in Turner Terrace. Citywide, 1,321 families — more than 3,000 people — rent 729 houses or apartments for one-third of the cost of living there, with the rest subsidized by the government.

The Lumberton Housing Authority is a public nonprofit funded by rents received from tenants and grants received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nationwide, there are about 4.3 million families in public housing, with about 38 percent of those in the South — the highest percentage in the country, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Candidates for public housing must be poor families and more often than not a single mother is the head-of-household. Housing Authority Executive Director James Meacher said there are very few men in public housing, so there should be very few men loitering in the housing projects.

“Violence (in Turner Terrace) is a matter of people coming into an area that were not residents in the area, and the persons who were killed there, again, were not people who lived in the community,” he said.

Jones said that the propensity for crime in Turner Terrace is in part because it is on N.C. 41, making it the most visible of the city’s housing projects.

Barnes said that a lot of the men in the housing complex who don’t belong there have fathered children with young women who live there.

“This is the biggest problem: Certain folks who allow people to gather up inside or outside of their houses,” Barnes said. “People can’t allow outsiders to gather up in their neighborhoods. When they see people gathering up, call the police, and then when people gather back up, call the police again. If there are certain apartments that are allowing people to gather up, talk to the Housing Authority and get them evicted.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development adopted a “one-strike-you’re-out” policy in 1996 following a burgeoning drug presence in housing projects nationwide. The policy mandates the immediate eviction of any tenant associated with using or selling illegal drugs — part of why groups of non-residents gather in Turner Terrace, police say.

Barnes said that part of the problem in Turner Terrace is that the Housing Authority doesn’t hold a hard enough line with its eviction policy. “It would definitely be helpful to the area if it were strictly enforced,” he said.

Meacher said the Housing Authority for the past 20 years has had a contract with the Police Department for a special beat, where officers patrol city housing projects. As a housing officer from 1994 to 1996, Jones, now with Special Operations, worked exclusively in Turner Terrace.

“I still know people there — I still have friends there,” he said. “They’re good people.”

Since April, Jones said police have beefed up their presence with more foot and bike patrols in Turner Terrace. Prior to the step-up, he said there was a single officer who patrolled three housing projects.

Baker, the resident, said increased police presence over the past month has led to a noticeable improvement in safety at the project.

“There’s been a big change — there aren’t so many drugs,” Baker said. “Turner Terrace is real quiet right now, and it happened quickly.

“I’m glad it’s quiet, because at one point, it was real bad.”

Jones has added two housing officers and two gang officers who patrol Turner Terrace, and more “hotspot” officers who watch areas prone to violence. In September, the Police Department will received federal grant money to hire three additional community officers.

“We’re putting all the resources we can into it,” Jones said.

But, he said, “homicide is one of those things: If someone puts in their mind they’re going to kill someone, they’re going to do it.”

Meacher said Turner Terrace residents are active in community watches, which are viewed by crime prevention experts as the best way to prevent criminals from invading a neighborhood.

“If they see persons in the community who are not residents and who should not be there, they’re free to call police and ask them why they’re in the community. If the person is there for the wrong purpose, he can be charged and detained,” Meacher said. “It takes everyone to help themselves and help the police in curbing crime in their communities.”

Meacher emphasized that public housing is not a detriment to the city: It contributes $12 million to the city’s economy annually, primarily through goods and services purchased by people who can live in the city with subsidized housing, and through maintenance the Housing Authority contracts to keep the projects up to code, he said.

“It’s an economic boom to the community, and it’s the same thing in every community: Large amounts of money come in through public housing authority throughout the country,” he said.

Turner Terrace was built to replace deteriorated housing. A medical clinic, stores and businesses adjacent to the complex are so “folks in the community could have easy access to shopping and other conveniences,” he said.

The project offers its tenants education programs, including adult education classes; socialization programs for 5- to 17-year-olds, including teen pregnancy prevention and tutoring; a summer lunch program; and a Boys and Girls Club unit.

“We don’t want a bad name,” Meacher said. “People are coming into the community and committing crimes; it’s not the people who live in the community. The violence is not related to living in the community — it’s just a place, an address where the violence took place.”