Across the street, the Izarra family woke one March morning to find a four- foot cross, "NO SPICS" and a swastika sprayed on their new home.
In April, a crowd of young white men stood outside the Izarras' front door, drinking, throwing bottles against the side of the house, yelling, "Happy Birthday Robby."
"What are they saying?" Freddie Izarra, 14, asked his parents. "Why are they saying 'Robby?' "
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"Robby" was Robert Burns, 23, who was killed on the corner of Rorer and Westmoreland Streets at 4 a.m. July 19, 1992.
Burns was outside with friends when a car drove past. Taunts were shouted, a shot fired. Burns was white; the two men charged with his murder Hispanic and black.
More than 100 white residents took to the streets to vent their anger. They stopped a Latino man and his family at a traffic light, broke a window and began rocking his car. The driver pulled a gun and fired into the mob, wounding three Kensington men.
In the year since, the tension in the neighborhood around McVeigh Playground and Ascension of Our Lord parish has intensified to the point that the East Police Division has designated it a "hot zone of racial conflict."
Neighbors, police and clergy are working together to try to ease the tension.
The McVeigh area is on the fault line between two rapidly changing neighborhoods. The one around McVeigh is mostly white, working class - and
shrinking. Rubbing against it is a poor, fast-growing Latino community that is pushing into the white area.
"Some people don't want to see the neighborhood changing. And the more it happens, the more they resist," said Henry Shain, who was raised near McVeigh and now works for State Rep. John J. Taylor, whose district includes Kensington and part of the McVeigh neighborhood.
