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Tie

Guest HALOHZ

By Guest HALOHZ
in Rest In Peace

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Syfr

Syfr

Posted
Posted

Damn man...it's fucking sad to lose such a legend...I might be from a small down, but I know the boys that are dying. Regretfully, I haven't met them

 

Peace Jon Lim, hope you vamped the bitch that shot you for his camera in heaven.

R.I.P. Tie One - True Legend

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-DissidenT-

-DissidenT-

Posted
Posted

San Francisco December 14, 1998

 

Tragic Collision of Life and Art Photographer who killed tagger may be charged

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, December 14, 1998

 

Jonathan Lim's art was spray-painting elaborate graffiti on the walls and rooftops of San Francisco's

Tenderloin. William Porter's art was photographing the city's historic buildings and skyline.

In March, the two were thrust into a split-second confrontation outside the second-story window of

Porter's Tenderloin loft that left one of them dead and the other under suspicion.

Porter, 51, told police he thought an intruder wastrying to come through his window. He pointed his

gun, and it went off when the man grabbed it, Porter said. The lone witness to the confrontation was a Tenderloin woman who later told police that the young man shouted, Hold on! seconds before being fatally wounded. Nine months after the incident, the San Francisco grand jury is weighing evidence to resolve the differing accounts of what happened and either charge or exonerate Porter in the death of the 18-year-old tagger.

In some ways, Porter and Lim embody the clash of old versus new, East versus West, established art

versus counterculture.

 

But in many respects, the victim and our suspect are more similar than they are different, said San

Francisco police Inspector Holly Pera, who handled the case. They are both artists, both loved the city, both loved that area, both were comfortable there,'' Pera said. To me, it's a tragedy with a capital T, Pera said. It's tragic for the person who had the gun, who will have to live with it forever; it is tragic for this young man who has no life.

 

William Porter was nearly killed while serving as a Marine Corps combat photographer in Vietnam.

He was shot three times and then struck by fragments from a hand grenade heaved at him in October 1967 while in combat at Quang Tre, the northernmost province of South Vietnam.

A round shattered his upper left leg, while the grenade fragments were embedded in his upper left

arm. Porter endured 12 hours of agony before he could be taken by helicopter to a field hospital.

By all rights, I should have died,'' he said. I should have bled to death. I've considered everything since as extra.'' In all, he spent nine months in a hospital. I keep telling myself, that which we do not perish from will make us stronger,'' he said.

After recuperating in Chicago, Porter went to Art Center College of Design's renowned photography

school in Los Angeles before studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. After he graduated, his

career flourished.

 

His work is on permanent display in the first-floor lobby of the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. building

on Market Street in San Francisco, in a series of photographs documenting the company's seismic

improvements. He is also taking part in the Library of Congress historic buildings survey, having

photographed the Berkeley Main Library, the Hearst Mining Building at the University of California at Berkeley and the state building in San Francisco's Civic Center.

 

In 1976, he rented a 3,000- square-foot loft at 120 Taylor St. and converted it into a live-work space.

I thought the neighborhood would change in '76,'' Porter said. And it did -- it got worse. I thought I

could tough this out.'' One time, he said, a transient followed him back to the loft, coming inside. Porter

ordered him out at gunpoint. Another time, a burglar stole money out of his pants pocket. To scare off criminals, he put up a shooting-range target practice silhouette that could be seen when his door was opened. He also came up with an idea intended to prove, if necessary, that someone had broken into his loft he covered the windowsill with chalk. When Lim's body was found on the pavement below Porter's

loft, it was covered with blue chalk. Jonathan See Lim was born in the Philippines, a few years after Porter came to the Tenderloin. Like Porter, Lim found himself in San Francisco by way of Chicago and the Far East. Along the way, he had become a Chinese citizen. Lim was a Buddhist and espoused nonviolence. He even incorporated the peace sign into his tag moniker.

 

He was a very, very gentle person, Inspector Pera said. He did not approve of any sort of aggressive behavior. Lim slept days so he could make nightly forays, scaling buildings to spray-paint his moniker, TIE, on walls and rooftops. His family in San Bruno struggled to understand him. His mother, Anita Lim, wanted him to get a high school diploma and hoped to enroll him in art school or take him to China to get his life on track. Instead, Jonathan Lim lived with friends, using the $500-a-month allowance his mother gave him. Anita Lim said her son, whom she called JoJo, was talented artistically and had done well in

school. He liked to draw when he was a little boy,'' Anita Lim said. When he was 3 years old, he drew

Mickey Mouse. While growing up, his older sister Lorraine recalled, the boy shunned violence.

 

He never hurt a fly, said Lorraine Lim, 23. If he would see an animal in the house, instead of killing

it, he would take it outside and let it free. But by the time Jonathan Lim was a teenager, he had begun to stray. He briefly attended Lincoln High in Stockton, but dropped out at 17. At the time of his death, he had been away from home about three months. I didn't know he was climbing, Anita Lim said.

He told me that he loved to draw, he loved art and said, This is my life. All my life I would do this. But she did not approve. I told him not to draw anyplace that does not belong to you, she said.

He told me he didn't go tagging. Anita Lim said she understands her son better now. This kind of kid, they draw on the street they wouldn't hurt anybody. They just like to draw. I met his friends and asked them, Why do you do this?'

This is our art. We enjoy it, was the reply.

 

On March 18, Porter was awakened at 1:10 a.m. by something at his window. He says he ran over,

saw an intruder and shouted, Get out of here, I have a gun. The man went for the gun, Porter says.

 

It was never my intention to shoot anybody,'' he said. When the individual grabbed the gun, that's

when it went off. I don't know what his intentions were. I can't say he was trying to rip me off, but in my mind, in attempting to enter, this is not good. I warned him that I had a firearm. I had no idea that this individual would play Jackie Chan and grab the gun. Normally, Porter's account would close the book on the case: Longtime resident shoots man trying break into his place. But a woman who was in the parking lot outside Porter's loft told police a different version: Lim was pleading with the gunman before he was shot. Phyllis Brewster, 41, said she heard Lim yell, Wait man, hold on!'' before the gunfire. Porter said the intruder never said anything, just grabbed for the gun. He could not explain Brewster's account.

 

I never had any contact with that individual other than seeing her on the street, he said. Brewster has said she was drinking earlier in the evening, and Porter's attorney, Tony Tamburello, questioned her credibility. The witness was out there at 1:30 in the morning and admits to having had intoxicating substances, he said. Think about it. It's 1:30 in the morning in the Tenderloin.

Tamburello said police have proof that Lim grabbed for the weapon in the form of handprints

on the gun. Then there is the blue chalk that Porter had coated on his windowsill. You could see the chalk going into the window and the markings on the gun, Tamburello said. There was blue chalk all over

the kid. The key in deciding the case may be whether Lim had gunshot residue on his left hand, something that could back up Porter's account of the gun being grabbed at the time the weapon discharged. So far, no residue has been found.

 

Since the incident, Porter says, bricks have been tossed through his window, and he has suffered

from depression. But he pledged to continue to live in the Tenderloin. It has been very stressful, to say the least, he said. I'm trying to concentrate, do my work. Porter says he feels sorry for Lim's family. The incident was unavoidable, but that offers little comfort for snuffing out a young life, he says.

Who knows what he might have been as an artist? Who knows, 18 or so, you have your entire

life ahead of you, Porter said. He could have been anything. At the time it happened, if I had

known, I would have given him a ladder and paint. I don't necessarily agree with graffiti, but that was

not what this was about at the time. Everyone is a victim in this. I certainly feel like one.

 

Anita Lim does not buy Porter's explanation. I would call the police first, not get a gun and shoot somebody. He was just climbing. She said Porter's way was Western, not Eastern. In the Asian way, the culture is different. When the old people see the kids, you have to teach them, go down, calmly. That is the way of humanity. This is not; this is cruel. Porter is still alive. My son is not here, she said. Do you think I can live a happy life until I die? Every day, every minute, I'm thinking of my son. Lorraine Lim said her family awaits justice. Nobody should just kill somebody and walk around freely, like it's a game. Tamburello says his client should have been cleared long ago.

 

You as a citizen have a right to protect yourself, he said. You have a right to protect yourself

against a hot prowl burglar. The ambiguities in the case led to long delays in the decision to either prosecute or clear Porter. Finally, the district attorney's office opted to take the case to the grand jury, bringing the first witnesses last week. It's really difficult, Pera said. The truth is right there in the middle. I don't get a sense that the boy was up to no good, but I don't get a sense Porter was up to anything either.............

 

12/15/98

.......The San Francisco grand jury voted not to indict a 51-year-old Tenderloin photographer on criminal charges after he admitted fatally shooting a graffiti tagger he believed was trying to burglarize his apartment. The grand jury decision was issued Tuesday afternoon after several days of deliberations. Like all grand jury decisions, it was reached behind closed doors and no public information was released.

But the photographer, William Porter, was notified through his defense attorney, Tony Tamburello, on Tuesday afternoon.

 

"We're very happy they voted not to indict," Tamburello said. "Mr. Porter is very grateful for the consideration that the grand jury gave him. They spent a lot of time going over the facts. Mr. Porter was reasonably defending himself in a situation from an intruder coming into his home. ... This should have been resolved in Mr. Porter's favor a long time ago."

The grand jury decision stems from a March 18 incident in which Jonathan See Lim, 18, was shot to death at the fire-escape window outside Porter's second-story apartment at 120 Taylor St.

Porter told police he fired in self-defense as Lim tried to climb in through his window. Porter said Lim grabbed for his gun. "It was not a calculated attempt by Mr. Porter to pull the trigger," Tamburello said. "It just happened."

 

Lim's friends have said the young man deplored violence and was not a burglar. They said Lim, who used the graffiti moniker "TIE ONE," was probably climbing up the fire escape to leave his tag somewhere nearby.

"Mr. Porter wishes that this never had happened," Tamburello said. "He feels a great deal of empathy for the mother of this person. He hopes that she can heal. He did not want this result. He extends his sympathy to the family."

 

 

 

 

Found at http://www.nograffiti.com/files/Killed.htm

 

If you done wanna read the whole thing I colored the main part about TIE that is worth reading... Rest In Paradise again... cant stress it enough how much I feel this shit. :cry2:

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Steel

Steel

Posted
Posted

^ dude im with u, i feel this so badly that tie is the only i writer that whenever i think of him i am on the verge of tears - and most of the time i do weep for him, it gets to a point where u cant express how much u feel for tie.

 

R.I.P Tie , were gonna be with u soon mate.

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randy_watson

randy_watson

Posted
Posted
his real peeps should do a book on him....

word up

 

i would like to know about it if it ever get in the process,

 

if you ever rolled with tie you would definately have some stories.

 

he showed me so much, to this day he still motivates me.

 

you will never be forgotten homie, i know your still bombin wherever you are.

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