Trial Ordered for Pair in Alexander Murders

Two reputed Los Angeles gang members charged with the murders of four family members of former football star Kermit Alexander were ordered to stand trial Friday after a former gang member testified that one of the defendants had given him a rifle believed to be the murder weapon.

Tiequon Aundray Cox, 18, and Horace Edwin Burns, 20, were bound over for trial by Judge Candace D. Cooper and scheduled to be formally arraigned Jan. 18. If convicted, the two could receive the death penalty for the murders of the former Ram player’s mother, sister and two nephews.

Members of the Alexander family in the courtroom Friday responded with tears and hugs when the two were bound over for trial. “Thank Jesus!” exclaimed one woman, who was identified only as the late Mrs. Alexander’s closest friend.

Narcotics Connection

The prosecution has alleged that the two defendants burst into the home of Alexander’s mother, Ebora, 58, on Aug. 31 and that Cox shot the four with a .30-caliber carbine. According to authorities, the two were seeking revenge for a narcotics-related shooting and raided the Alexander home by mistake. The house they were reportedly seeking was on a nearby block.

The last witness called by Deputy Dist. Atty. Sterling E. Norris during the two-day preliminary hearing was James Roy Kennedy, 17. Kennedy identified himself as a member of the Rolling 60s, a South-Central Los Angeles street gang to which police say Cox and Burns also belonged.

Kennedy was arrested Sept. 27 while guarding a drug storehouse, and he led police to a .30-caliber rifle later determined by ballistic tests to be the murder weapon in the Alexander case. As a condition of probation in his own narcotics case, he had agreed to testify in the Alexander trial.

When asked who had given him the rifle, he paused for a full 10 seconds before responding, “Don’t wanna say.” However, under more questioning, he looked across the courtroom at his former friends and answered, “Cox.”

He said that Cox had given him the rifle in late August or early September and told him to “destroy it.” He said Cox also gave him a red jacket and told to wash it because it had gunpowder on it.

Under questioning by defense attorneys, however, Kennedy testified that he had cooperated with authorities only after undercover police struck him four or five times with a billy club in his “private parts” and threatened to shoot him with an electric shock device used to subdue violent drug users.

Nonetheless, he added, “I ain’t got no reason to lie. . . . He gave me the gun.”

Los Angeles police spokesman Lt. Dan Cooke said he had never heard of the allegations raised by Kennedy after his arrest. He said that in any case, the department would not comment on matters pertaining to an ongoing criminal trial.

Maybe a Third Person

Two neighbors also testified Friday that there may have been a third person, called “C. W.,” involved in the case. The two testified that they had overheard Burns say that the murders had happened after Burns, Cox and C. W. had gone to the Alexander home to retaliate for a shooting at C. W.’s house the night before.

Norris declined to identify C. W. or to say what role, if any, he or she might have played in the murders.

The other victims included Alexander’s sister, Dietra, 24, and his nephews, Damani Garner-Alexander, 13, of San Francisco, and Damon Bonner, 8, of Pittsburgh.

The prosecution is alleging that the killings were committed under special circumstances that involve the commission of multiple murders. If convicted under such circumstances, the two young men could be sentenced to the gas chamber.