Boy, 12, Sought in Slaying of Watts Grandmother

The stray bullet that claimed the life of a popular Watts grandmother last week as she stood on her front porch is believed to have been fired by a 12-year-old boy who had just spent more than an hour joining in the torture and gang rape of a child, police said Thursday.

Giving a chilling account of the events leading to the death of 82-year-old Viola McClain, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams called on the public to help locate the prime suspect: a neighborhood child who this week celebrated his 12th birthday and who was described by Williams as armed and dangerous.

The chief took the extraordinary step of publicly identifying the boy on television. (The Times does not publish the names of juvenile crime suspects unless they are being prosecuted as adults.) Police described the boy as black, between 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-7 and weighing about 140 pounds, with an unkempt Afro hairstyle. They said he was wearing baggy black pants and a white T-shirt at the time of the shooting.

Williams said that, under normal circumstances, the child’s identity would not have been publicly released, and in the aftermath of his statement, juvenile law experts questioned the decision’s legality.

Williams said the savagery of the crimes of which he is accused and the youth’s vicious reputation in the neighborhood prompted authorities to obtain a Juvenile Court judge’s permission to divulge the name.

McClain’s death at dusk last Friday in the 1300 block of East 111th Street--a once-proud neighborhood that now stands in the shadows of the Nickerson Gardens housing project--was in itself a blow to her community.

A local activist who had lived in her Bible-decked bungalow since 1935, “Mother McClain” was so beloved that scores of mourners came to a candlelight memorial Wednesday night.

But on Thursday, as police announced a flurry of arrests in the case, their update took on a grimmer tone. McClain’s death, they said, was the aftermath of an orgy of viciousness at an abandoned house next door to her home.

Among other things, Williams said that, during the hours preceding the shooting, as many as 10 boys and men ranging in age from 11 to 20 abducted a 13-year-old girl from the neighborhood and forced her into the vermin-infested stucco duplex.

There, he said, they raped and terrorized the child for an hour and a half before barricading her in a room. In an apparent attempt to kill their victim and cover their tracks, the chief said, the girl’s attackers tried to set fire to the house.

It was when two of the youths dragged the mattresses they had used in the attack into the front yard and tried to set them ablaze that the confrontation occurred that ultimately led to McClain’s death.

McClain’s 33-year-old grandson, Dumar Starks, said that he had paced in his grandmother’s house for much of the evening, simmering with irritation at the commotion next door. Finally, he said, he lost patience and marched across the driveway and into the weed-patched yard where two of the boys stood, flicking a lighter at the mattresses.

Starks, an office temporary worker who lived with his grandmother, said that when he asked the boys why they were setting fires, they replied, “Because we can.” Then, he said, one pulled a semiautomatic pistol from the waistband of his baggy black pants and loaded a round into the gun’s chamber.

Starks has said that he then ran back into his grandmother’s house and grabbed his own gun. On Thursday, police said that when he emerged from the house, he fired several times but hit nothing but the exterior of a house across the street.

Meanwhile, McClain had stepped onto her front porch and into the line of fire. Starks told police that by the time he could get to her, she had been struck and lay bleeding on her porch from a fatal gunshot wound in her throat.

In his news conference Thursday, Williams said that police from the department’s Southeast Division and South Bureau homicide detail worked around the clock in the incident’s aftermath. Detectives made one arrest in the case the following day: Reginald Barner, 20, a neighborhood man, was charged with eight counts of sexual assault in connection with the rape.

Then, at 5 a.m. Thursday, Williams said, nearly 50 officers raided 13 locations in the neighborhood. They confiscated an assault rifle and four handguns, authorities said, and arrested five juveniles. Williams said three suspects are still being sought: a 15-year-old unnamed accomplice, a second adult and the 12-year-old alleged gunman, whom he described as a “very vicious young man.”

In Nickerson Gardens, where the slaying suspect’s mother lives, residents said the boy was known in the neighborhood, but not as a resident. Several said he “hung out” more than lived in the faded blue-and-white project; others described him as a homeless runaway.

South Bureau Lt. John Dunkin said the boy’s own mother feared him, and he has an extensive criminal record. When she last saw him, three days ago, Dunkin said, she tried to wrestle him to the ground in a futile attempt to force him to go see his probation officer; when she realized her son was armed, however, she released him, she told police.

It was unclear what evidence led police Thursday to pinpoint the 12-year-old as the gunman in McClain’s death. The woman’s grandson had given police descriptions of the two youths who had confronted him, but they were described as substantially bigger than the boy.

Moreover, authorities acknowledge, it is common for gangs to pin felonies on their youngest affiliates, on the reasoning that children usually get lighter sentences.

In the aftermath of the decision to identify the child, experts in juvenile law said police may have violated the boy’s statutory rights. Under California law, the names of minors in criminal matters are kept confidential, with only two exceptions: Names can be released if the suspect is 14 or older and arrested for committing a serious felony, such as homicide, and courts can give names to school superintendents when a minor has been found guilty of committing a serious felony.

“If you label a 12-year-old a murderer, it is going to be very difficult for him to return to his life and succeed,” said Shannan Wilber, a staff attorney at the Youth Law Center in San Francisco.

Dunkin refused to elaborate on the case against the boy, saying only: “We need to get this youngster. We believe he’s a danger to the community.”

Meanwhile, on 111th Street, residents expressed outrage at the case--and at the length of time the city took to board up the abandoned property, which they had complained about for more than a year.

Neighbors said that the sagging duplex had been vacated after a drug raid last year, and shortly thereafter became a magnet for junkies and bums. Each night, they said, transients would park their shopping carts outside and crawl through the broken windows into the fetid rooms.

Ethel Hale, 69, who lives across the street from the place, said she wrote City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. four times to complain; another neighbor, Henrietta Maston, corresponded with Svorinich as recently as June 13.

But Hale said their complaints yielded little more than a couple of visits from city inspectors, who “did a lot of writing on a pad” and little more.

City records show that, as part of the city’s most aggressive nuisance abatement program, a police officer and building inspector went to the duplex two weeks ago, and issued an immediate order for the property to be boarded, fenced and cleaned.

“It was just a total mess inside,” recalled Officer Michael Lockett, who went to the site July 16. “Basically, it was just empty rooms. Inside, you’ll find a few syringes, there was gang graffiti on the walls. The rear yard was high brush and trash.”

The order was posted--along with a ‘No Trespassing’ sign--on the house July 16th, and an official letter was sent to owner Brino C. Bruno on July 29. If the owner fails to respond, city officials clean, board and fence the property themselves and charge the owner. Bruno could not be reached for comment.

Despite neighbors’ statements to the contrary, police and building department officials said Thursday that they had not received any complaints about the house, and just happened to find it on a routine swing through the neighborhood.

But aides to Svorinich said they alert building inspectors to abandoned properties regularly, and listed the duplex as a problem as early as January.

Svorinich’s chief of staff, Barry Glickman, said the house was included in lists of abandoned homes faxed to building inspector John Sciberras again in April and July.

“We told them it appeared to be an abandoned house that was attracting a negative element and we’d like them to do something about it,” Glickman explained. “That’s their job: to find the owner, get him to clean it up, or clean it up and charge him, or demolish it.”

Glickman said the abatement process is a “frustrating program” because it often takes city officials months or more to get properties boarded or torn down. Lockett said the empty duplex was one of at least half a dozen abandoned buildings in that block of 111th and 110th streets that city officials have cited in recent months.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Mark Morrow, senior inspector with the Building and Safety Department. “I wish we didn’t have so many.”

Citywide, officials have abated 1,977 abandoned houses over the past several years, Morrow said. In the Police Department’s Southeast Division, more than 100 vacant homes have been cleaned and fenced over the past year, according to LAPD Officer Richard Davis.