Murder Trial Begins in Case Arising From Watts Feud

With the patriarch of the Hawkins family of Watts maintaining his son’s innocence outside the courtroom, the murder trial of James Hawkins Jr. began Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Hawkins Jr., 41, is charged with shooting alleged gang member Anttwon Thomas, 19, in September, 1983, precipitating a series of violent reprisals by other gang members against the Hawkins clan.

Shortly after the retaliations--but long before charges were filed against the younger Hawkins--Mayor Tom Bradley and police officials held a press conference at the family’s market and arcade to voice their support for the embattled clan.

“This case should never have been brought,” contended James Hawkins Sr., after the opening session. “ . . . He (the victim) was a troublemaker.”

In court, however, Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss said Hawkins Jr. shot Thomas in a “cold-blooded” fashion.

In his opening statement to jurors, Giss charged that the shooting occurred a full 10 minutes after the elder Hawkins had exchanged words with Thomas and two other alleged gang members outside the family store on Slater Street at Imperial Highway. Hawkins Sr., the prosecutor said, had confronted the youths after they accosted a mother and four children who had been riding their bicycles near the store, which is across from the Nickerson Gardens housing project.

Giss said witnesses will testify that the younger Hawkins proceeded to retrieve a sawed-off shotgun from his nearby recreational vehicle, walked into the arcade and grabbed Thomas, who was playing a video game.

“He (Hawkins Jr.) dragged him to the threshold of the doorway of the arcade and there shot him in cold blood with the double-barreled shotgun,” Giss told jurors.

The prosecution’s first witness, Frank Singleton Jr., 15, testified that he saw Hawkins Jr. enter the arcade, take Thomas by the shirt collar and ask, “whether he was messing with his father. And he (Thomas) said ‘no.’ ”

Before Thomas was shot, Singleton added, a struggle ensued and the younger Hawkins told the youth, “I’ll teach you something.”

Defense attorney Stephen L. Schwartz declined to make an opening statment.

Hawkins was charged with murder in April, 1984, several months after the incident.

Seventeen of the gang members have been convicted of charges involving terrorizing the Hawkins family with guns and Molotov cocktails. They have received terms of up to nine years and four months in prison.