Eddie Laurel posed for group pictures with the North Side Gangsters and posted them on his MySpace page.

The 17-year-old has been visited in jail more than a dozen times by people who have admitted to Wichita police they belong to the so-called NSG street gang.

Friday, jurors in his first-degree murder trial heard about the teenager's gang ties, and how life works on Wichita's most dangerous streets, which prosecutors say led to last summer's shooting death of a 13-year-old boy.

Miguel Angel Andrade Martinez didn't belong to a gang. But he may have died because of the ignorance of Wichita's gang members.

Prosecutors say Laurel, then 16, wanted to impress others in the North Side Gangsters — also known as NSGs — by seeking retribution for a fight involving one of its top members. But Laurel went to the wrong house, the state says, helping spray the door with the 10 bullets that hit Miguel as he went to answer a knock around 6 a.m. on June 20.

Police Detective Chad Beard has spent most of the last decade collecting intelligence on street gangs in Wichita, which he told the jury now count some 3,000 documented members.

"Wichita is smaller, but we have many of the problems of larger cities," Beard told the jury.

The names adopted by gangs may apply to Wichita but actually have roots in larger urban areas, Beard said.

The North Side Gangsters do hang out in north Wichita, Beard said, but they are modeled after a group with the same name that evolved from a prison gang from northern California. The NSGs are known to wear red and have tattoos that include "14" — signifying "N" as the 14th letter of the alphabet.

Locally, the NSGs are a small set that broke off from another Wichita gang, the Vato Loco Boys, around 1999, Beard said. The Vato Loco Boys are an offshoot of the Folk Nation, a Chicago-based network of street gangs.

Each gang has a kind of unwritten hierarchy, Beard said, with those calling themselves "OGs" — for "original gangsters" — at the top.

Daniel Betancourt identified himself as an OG in the North Side Gangsters to police as early as 2006, Beard said. Brothers Eli and Alejandro Betancourt had been associated with the Vato Loco Boys.

Witnesses have said Laurel, Eli Betancourt and Alejandro Betancourt went to Miguel's house because they thought someone who lived there was involved in a fight the previous month with Daniel Betancourt. But the man they were looking for didn't live there.

Eli and Alejandro Betancourt were both convicted of murder in trials earlier this year.

Beard said it's not unusual for gang members to talk about their life to police, just as they post pictures of themselves in gang dress and use gang signs on Internet social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

"They like to tell us about what they do and their gang lifestyle because it's their way of representing their gangs," Beard testified. "But they don't want to tell us about the bad stuff they do."

Those include burglaries, vandalism, drug running, drive-by shootings and murder.

Young kids join gangs for various reasons, Beard said, including to have social contacts or to follow family members into the lifestyle.

It's also not unusual in Wichita for gangs that would be vicious rivals in other cities to be friends here because it's a smaller town.

"You'll find people of the same family in rival gangs," Beard said. "You'll find guys who grew up next to each other who are in rival gangs, but since they've known each other all their lives, they'll be friends. That can also be dangerous."

Prosecutors C.J. Rieg and Trinity Muth say Laurel wanted to become a member of the NSGs and figured he could solidify his gang affiliation by shooting a man who had hurt Daniel Betancourt. Instead, witnesses say, Laurel went to Miguel's house in the 2400 block of North Jackson.

Laurel's lawyer, John Sullivan, filed notice in court files saying his client contends he was in Haven at the time of the shooting.

A man who was in the car with Laurel before and after the shooting said he was taken to a house at 24th Street and Park Place. Beard said Wichita police recognize that house as a known hangout for NSG members.

There are two ways a youth can join a gang, Beard testified. They are "blessed in" on the word of a senior member, such as an OG. Or they can be "jumped in" by getting beaten up by a circle of gang members.

Last November, after being arrested and charged with murder, Laurel told a Sedgwick County sheriff's deputy he had been "blessed in" to the NSGs while he was in the Juvenile Detention Facility.

The trial continues Monday before Judge Ben Burgess.