The Columbus Epps killing, and its legal tail: parole, the ankle monitor, Brighton confinement

texture · ≈2000 (B.S.), "four years gone" before YTSDB

• When: ≈2000 (four years before the YTSDB narration); the parole status is current in the YTSDB present
• What: Roy Tony killed Columbus Epps — brother of Delores Epps, the girl Clenette jumps double dutch with — at the Brighton Projects, four years before the events of the Wardine section. The killing was over a woman: Clenette's own mother ("My momma be the lady Roy Tony kill Columbus Epps over"). In the YTSDB present he is on parole, wearing an ankle device that "send radio signals to Parole that he still here in Brighton"; "Roy Tony cant be leave Brighton." The murder is why the adults around the children defer to him — "My momma scared of Roy Tony" is Clenette's refrain — and it is the fact that makes every later fear in the section credible. His family tie to the household he menaces: "Roy Tony brother be Wardine father. He gone."