6

BABY LANE & LIL’ OWL

In the eighties, while Tim and Bob were learning the streets, establishing their partnership, and eventually being appointed to the Compton P.D.’s gang unit, two teenagers whose lives would frequently intersect with theirs over the next several years and whose fate as friends would forever be linked were also learning the streets and establishing a partnership on the opposite side of the law.

Orlando Anderson and Michael Dorrough were both born in 1974. Their mothers met at Roosevelt Junior High School in Compton (now Roosevelt Middle School) in the seventh grade. Dorrough’s grandmother and Anderson’s aunt were both nurses. Because they had this in common, their families became close, like one big family. In the summer, Anderson’s mother would sometimes stay with Dorrough’s grandmother in the Nickerson Gardens housing projects. Dorrough’s mother was often referred to as Anderson’s aunt, and he her nephew. Both boys were very close.

By the time they were around fifteen or sixteen years old at the end of the eighties, the boys were drawn to the allure of gang life, specifically as members of the South Side Crips. Dorrough, always a neat dresser, had begun to wear the gang’s colors. Next he got a tattoo that undeniably identified him as a part of the SSCC. As a juvenile, when he would get arrested, Tim and Bob would go to his house and pick up his mother - who didn’t own a car - and take her to the station. She would sign the papers to get Michael released and Tim and Bob would take mother and son back home.

Michael was called “Lil’ Owl,” sometimes just “Owl,” and wasn’t afraid to be violent or to kill. Between him and his best friend, he was the hard one. Orlando was called “Baby Lane,” sometimes “Lil’ Lando.” Even though he was a South Side Compton Crip, he was seen as a nice kid, not someone who came across as tough or “gangster.” He graduated from high school and even took a few courses in community college.

Michael Dorrough, left, and Orlando Anderson, right.

Lil’ Owl was a bonafide badass, but Baby Lane would be the one who became legendary.

***

By the mid-nineties, Tim and Bob would have many encounters with Anderson and Dorrough for narcotics trafficking, shootings, and other assorted crimes. They would become a part of what was known as the Burris Street Crew in the South Side Crips, Burris being the street on which they lived. The other members of the Burris Street Crew - Anderson’s uncle Duane Keith “Keefe D” Davis, Kevin Davis, Deandre “Dre” Smith, Terrence Brown (aka “T-Brown” or “Bubble Up”), Wendell “Wynn” Prince, and Corey Edwards - would all have varying degrees of infamy, together and apart.