EXCLUSIVE: Mystery surrounds death of gangbanger’s assault victim.

“US Air Boeing 737 Captain Morris “Mo” Ford, 57, passed away suddenly on Wednesday, June 2, in Charlotte, North Carolina.” Charlotte Observer June 4th 2010.

Captain Ford was a retired US Naval Aviator (Lt Commander), a training pilot and check airman for US Air; as such Captain Ford did not fly scheduled or non-scheduled flights for the airline.

In 1985 Mo married Kathy Phillips, originally an Allegheny Airlines flight attendant who retired after flying for 35 years. They have two daughters, Mary (24), and Paige (22), both graduates of West Point. Mary is on R an R from her tour in Afghanistan and will return to duty later in June, while Paige just graduated and has been assigned to West Point

The Arizona Lawman’s News & Phoenix Police Gazette has learned that Captain Ford died of gunshot wound(s).

Charlotte Police are being very quiet about the circumstances surrounding Captain Morris’s death. Sources independent of the police, report that several gunshots were heard from the vicinity of the Ford home just prior to finding Captain Ford, found outside his home and who was suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.

Captain Ford is/was mentioned in Chapter 58, Gangbangers, Addendum 2, in the book Gunfights & Gunfighters, as a victim of a botched gang initiation. A couple of Christmas’s past while on the front lawn of his stately home in a prestigious section of Charlotte, NC., that had no history of violence let alone gang violence, he was attacked by a group of gangbangers, of whom he later described as being of Latino heritage.

Captain Ford struggled with his attackers receiving a gunshot wound to the abdomen. During the struggle one or more of the other gang members were hit, one perhaps later dying, by bullets fired from the gun, intended for use against Captain Ford. Following the wounding/slaying of the gangbanger(s) they fled the scene.

Charlotte Police are unwilling to discuss their progress in this earlier assault with a deadly weapon on the Captain but it is clear that no arrest in that case have yet been made.

Recently, Captain Ford had publicly and privately expressed concern that he had possibly (again?) become a target of the gang, (out of revenge, or pending arrests) as suspicious vehicles and unexplained activates had been observed and reported in his quiet upscale neighborhood.

Charlotte Police have an on-going and long-standing struggling with both local and Illegal Immigrant Latino gangs, who in turn are struggling over street control of the “Black Tar Heroin”, trade in the city and surrounding area(s).

Neither the Charlotte Police Department nor the Charlotte Observer have offered to comment on the suspicious circumstances surrounding Captain Ford’s earlier assault or recent death.

Captain Morris Ford