Rosjah Butler Jr. is a Selma statistic. He was the third of 12 murder victims counted in the city during 2010.

At 3 years old, Butler, whose family called him “Hunna,” was also the youngest murder victim of the year.

But the 3-year-old’s mother does not care about statistics. She feels the pain of loss.

On that April night, Amarys Williams heard her 3-year-old son ask for a drink. Before she could turn around, she heard the pop of a handgun. Williams looked at her son, who crumpled to the floor inside their Church Street house with a quizzical look on his face. He did not cry. He did not scream.

He looked up and said, “Mamma?”

Those were the last words Williams heard her son speak.

Families, friends and colleagues have suffered the loss of someone close to them a dozen times this year.

Four of those murders logged in Selma are unsolved.

In most cases this year, someone knew someone else; a dispute evolved over an issue and gunfire was used to settle the dispute, said Selma chief of police William Riley.

“You can’t prevent that kind of thing from happening.” Riley explained.

People who solve their issues with others do not have the “capability of solving disputes in a civil manner,” he said.

Testimony in court during a bond hearing reveals that’s what happened in Hunna’s case. Police testified in court that two suspects in the shooting said they had confronted Hunna’s uncle Glenn Williams over $200 worth of marijuana, which Williams said was bad.

During a preliminary hearing for the four men charged with capital murder in the case, Williams took the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination when asked if he had a gun at the time of the shooting or if he saw who fired the shots from the car.

Williams said he had stepped outside the house to call a girl.

Police said a stray bullet that pierced his bedroom wall and the child’s chest killed Hunna.

The toddler’s death brought Selma together for a while. People left gifts, flowers and other memorials to Hunna outside the house at Church Street. They talked about the tragedy.

As a result, Dallas County District Judge Robert Armstrong began levying higher bonds on those accused of murder and attempted murder. Most bonds now range from $1 million to $2 million to ensure suspects don’t get back on the street until their trial dates or until a no indictment is decided upon by a Dallas County grand jury.

When he sets the bond, Armstrong talks candidly about his attempts to stop “senseless violence.” The judge uses words like “sickening and wrong in the community.”

At one hearing this year, Armstrong told the suspects in the shooting death of Jessica Colon during an argument over a debt, “I want to send a message to the community. I want people to talk about this.”

In Selma, members of the city council say they do not know what to do about the rash of murders this year. At one point, council president Cecil Williamson had called for martial law and wanted to request the governor send in the National Guard.

He has backed off that request.

Williamson said this is not the first year Selma has logged in 12 murders.

“We have had quite a few murders in the past in Selma,” he said. “It seems they were more publicized.”

He does not believe this happens in cycles, but does have to do with conditions.

“Its true of most crimes of violence people tend to have know each other,” he said.

Riley has said he would like to have a police force of at least 65 officers — 10 more than the department has now. That’s not off base. A public safety study conducted two years ago by Ralph Ioimo recommended 63-65 officers on staff.

“I think we need to bring the police force up to the numbers recommended,” Williamson said. “I also believe we need to do what Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani did and clean up the city of dilapidated housing and drive them out of the city.”

Williamson is referring to Giuliani’s first term as mayor when he, in conjunction with New York City Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton, embarked on an aggressive enforcement strategy based on James Q. Wilson’s broken windows theory.

This approach involved crackdowns on minor offenses, such as painting graffiti, turnstile jumping at subway stations and stopping “squeezeemen” who would aggressively approach stopped vehicles in the street to clean windows and demand payment.

Another approach was to map crime geographically to identify emerging criminal patterns and chart police effectiveness.

Riley said the city is on the verge of mapping those statistics with the purchase and installation of computer equipment that creates such data.

“I think this will help move us into spotlighting what crimes are occurring where and will allow us to use our resources better,” he said.