“G-Wizz is a punk, snitching-ass n***a.”
 
Those were the words Jason T. Richards used to describe his “friend” Ogden E. “G-Wizz” Coleman a few weeks ago in a Baltimore County circuit courtroom.
 
Coleman was convicted of killing 15-year-old Quartrina Johnson last summer. Richards was convicted of conspiring to murder her. If you’re thinking you may have read Quartrina’s name on blackamericaweb.com before, you’re right.
 
I did the story last August, as Quartrina’s family held a vigil for her at a park in Baltimore County. Her body had been found burning in that park about a week before.
 
I wrote at the time that nobody in Quartrina’s family knew why she had been killed. But we know now, and the tale is yet another horror story from a city that has horror stories on an almost daily basis.
 
Quartrina was in foster care. She lived with her foster mother and a foster sister who was two years younger than Quartrina.
 
In early July of 2004, the foster mother caught the 13-year-old foster sister in bed with Richards. The foster mother contacted police, who took out a warrant charging Richards with statutory rape. Richards was 24 at the time.
 
Prosecutors allege that Richards then got three men — Coleman, Eric Thomas “Ock” Watkins and Michael Xavier Shelton — involved in a plot to kill both girls to keep them from testifying against him. Early on the morning of July 19, 2004, Richards went to the girls’ house and asked the foster sister to run away with him to California.
 
Not wanting to go alone, the foster sister asked Quartrina to go with her. Less than 27 hours later, Quartrina was strangled on the grounds of a Baltimore middle school. Her murderers tried to get rid of her body by burning it in the park.
 
When Baltimore County police went looking for suspects, they picked Coleman up first. Watkins and Richards swore Coleman snitched. Then they did some snitching of their own.
 
Watkins entered a guilty plea and turned state’s witness. He testified against Coleman. When Richards was picked up by police, he called Coleman a “punk, snitching-ass n***a” and then snitched on both Watkins and Coleman.
 
This sounds like a cross between the “Stop Snitching” DVD and the movie “Lolita.”
 
It also sounds like an eerie reminder of what I alluded to in my “Where’s daddy?” series: the problem of teen and pre-teen girls having sex with grown men.
 
The tragic and untimely death of Quartrina Johnson proves that such relationships are not only immoral and unwise and unhealthy. In her case, the relationship Quartrina’s foster sister had with Richards was downright deadly -- for Quartrina.
 
And, since all the characters in this morality play are black, it might be time for black folks to do another value check.
 
I’m hoping we all agree that 12-year-old girls shouldn’t be having sex with grown men. But do we all agree that cooperating with police when a girl like Quartrina is brutally murdered is the proper thing to do?
 
Most of us, perhaps, but not all of us.
 
I’ve listened to the lyrics of way too many rap tunes in which “snitches” are dissed and “gangstas” are praised. Now some “snitches” are, indeed, criminals and liars with their own agenda, as I said in last week’s column.
 
But in the death of Quartrina Johnson, “snitching” isn’t an issue. It was for Richards and Watkins, of course, because they didn’t want to get caught. But telling police all you know about a death as heinous as Quartrina’s isn’t “snitching.”
 
It’s more properly called “confessing.” As in confessing to a crime. As in confessing your sins. Confessing is good for the soul. And the four souls who did that horrible thing to Quartrina need all the good they can muster.
 
We need to make those distinctions. But some of us can’t. Do black folks wearing the “Stop Snitching” T-shirts and caps really know the message they’re sending? Both items of apparel are popular in Baltimore. One woman whose 13-year-old son faces murder charges even showed up at his preliminary hearing wearing a “Stop Snitching” cap. The boy, Baltimore police have said, is part of a drug ring.
 
Where are black Americans headed with our values? What kind of young men have we produced who would murder a 15-year-old girl and then consider those who confess to the crime the bad guys?