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YOUNG, OLD ALIKE ARE PREY IN CHA

Two groups of angry teenagers screamed across an empty Cabrini-Green parking lot Monday, their mouths curled into sneers as each blamed the other for the death of a 9-year-old girl, the latest innocent victim of gang violence in Chicago.

The chants and taunts exchanged by the two gangs that split control of this part of the Chicago Housing Authority development shut down the playground noise in front of the high-rise building where Laketa Crosby was shot to death Sunday night.

”They yell and they yell, but they`re all bastards,” said the dead girl`s cousin, Barbara Crosby, 18, as she stood and watched one gang saunter away and the other take refuge in the shade of the building where Laketa lived.

”They kill a little girl who didn`t do anything but make us happy and who was too poor to get up out of here. That`s what they did,” Barbara Crosby said. ”They don`t care about nobody.”

Monday evening, police charged Lawrence Taylor, 19, of 911 N. Hudson Ave., with murder in the shooting death, according to Sgt. David Oravetz of the Belmont Area.

According to police, Taylor, reputed to be a gang member, approached a relative of Laketa`s in the waiting room of Henrotin Hospital Sunday night and apologized for the shooting. Laketa died at 2:35 a.m. Monday.

Laketa, a 5th grader, was waiting for her turn at the jump rope game

”double dutch” on the hot Sunday night when the rival gangs began to scream their slogans and grab their guns.

She was leaning against a metal handrail when a bullet struck her in the chest, making her the 81st homicide victim in CHA developments since January, 1984. Laketa died less than a month after the fledgling Chicago Intervention Network began trying to stem the tide of street gang violence that has put the city in the unenviable position of listing homicide as the leading cause of death among its adolescents.

On July 1, 63 social workers from the network were assigned to five high- risk, inner-city neighborhoods, including the gang-infested war zone of Cabrini-Green, where 13 homicides have been recorded by police since January, 1984.

Minutes after Laketa was pronounced dead, the violence continued.

A 74-year-old resident of a South Side CHA senior citizens complex was stabbed to death in her 12th-floor apartment. Her 18-year-old granddaughter, who lived with her, was also stabbed and was listed in critical condition.

Mary Kind, of 334 W. 28th Pl., and her granddaughter, Jamie Matlock, suffered multiple wounds at the hands of an unknown assailant who police believe entered the apartment with Matlock at about 3 a.m. after being allowed inside by the elderly woman.

Kind was pronounced dead at Mercy Hospital, where Matlock underwent emergency surgery.

On Monday afternoon, as clean-up crews hosed down the breezeway where Laketa was shot, her grandmother sat with relatives in the cool darkness of their second-floor apartment and mourned the innocent dead.

”Those animals don`t care who gets hit or why. They`re just vicious dogs,” said the grandmother, Florine Crosby, 57, who spat out the words before jamming her hands into her apron pockets.

”They killed my baby, and the gangs got us all down on our knees,”

Florine Crosby said as she began to cry softly. ”They don`t care who gets plugged. We`re poor and we`ve got to live in this pit. They shoot during the day and night and when they shoot, we`ve got to crawl on the floor away from the window.”

Three floors above Florine Crosby`s apartment, Laketa`s mother, Linda, sat in a darkened kitchen surrounded by weeping children and stone-faced women.

”I don`t have nothing to say about my baby. I loved my baby,” Linda Crosby said. ”They killed my baby. They killed her for what? Why did they do that? Why?”

Said cousin Barbara: ”She was a smart little girl, a good student in school with A`s. She liked to read stories to me and to the rest of us. She could take care of young babies, and she could cook and iron clothes.

”This place will never be right. Maybe now we`ll all get up and leave.” On the South Side, near Comiskey Park, the family of Mary Kind sat on the porch of their home and tried to understand the horror of seeing the woman crumpled on a couch earlier that day.

Vernell Wilson, 34, Kind`s son-in-law, toyed with a fresh package of cigarettes. Wilson was called by Matlock early Monday after she was stabbed and arrived at the apartment before police entered the building, he said.

”Jamie`s out of it and she can`t help anybody,” Wilson said of the young woman lying unconscious in the hospital. ”She was sitting there on the couch, and Mary Kind was dead next to her. They knew whoever did it. But if Jamie dies, it`s over.”

Wilson and police said the attack on the two women was not the first time the family had experienced violence. According to police, Etta Kind, 31, Matlock`s mother and Mary Kind`s daughter, was shot to death in 1983 on the 6500 block of South St. Lawrence Avenue.

”We`ve been through it already, damn it!” said Etta Kind`s son Brady Matlock, 36. ”They killed her for nothing. Just like this one. Now we`ve got two women dead and maybe another one dead.

”Why?”