Hawkins Escapes, Vanishes

James Hawkins Jr., son of a Watts grocer whose family’s stand against a street gang attracted national attention two years ago, escaped along with two other prisoners from a holding area in the downtown Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building on Wednesday.

Last month, Hawkins, 41, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the 1983 shotgun killing of Anttwon Thomas, 19, whose death triggered violent confrontations between his fellow gang members and the Hawkins family.

After Wednesday’s escape, Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss, who prosecuted Hawkins, requested and was given 24-hour police protection.

Hawkins, a murder suspect identified as Jesus Gonzalez, and Richard Bullock, suspected of misdemeanor offenses, escaped from the 14th floor just before 5 p.m., Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

The three inmates apparently kicked out a wire mesh reinforced window in a visiting room that was temporarily being used as a holding tank and made their way to an anteroom, where they broke down a wooden door and escaped down a stairwell, deputies said.

Bullock, 25, whose legs were shackled, was captured shortly after the escape by a group of citizens outside the building, deputies said.

Hawkins and Gonzalez, 24, both unshackled and wearing civilian clothes, were last seen headed toward Union Station. Police and sheriff’s deputies mounted a widespread search on the ground and in helicopters, but by late Wednesday both men had eluded capture.

James Hawkins Sr., father of the escapee, said Wednesday night at his Watts home that the “whole family is begging him to turn himself in.”

The older Hawkins pleaded with reporters to “get that message to him.”

Asked what he thinks prompted his son to flee, the father declared that his son was “a little upset because he felt he got a bum deal” in his sentence for Thomas’ killing.

Hawkins was sentenced to the maximum of six years for voluntary manslaughter in the case, two more years for committing the crime with a firearm and 20 more years because he had previously been convicted of four violent felonies.

“He done his time,” the father said, “and they put it right back on him.”

Hawkins, awaiting trial on murder charges unrelated to Thomas’ death, was in the Criminal Courts Building for a hearing that was postponed. The charges stem from the June, 1984, shooting deaths of two reputed narcotics dealers.

The embattled Hawkins family drew praise and support from law enforcement officials and politicians and was the subject of a two-hour television documentary after its confrontation with the street gang.

For two nights after Thomas’ death, gang members fired shots and hurled Molotov cocktails at the Hawkins’ store and their adjacent home on Imperial Highway, across from the Nickerson Gardens Housing Project. Seventeen gang members were later convicted of crimes stemming from the assault.

During his trial for killing Thomas, Hawkins testified that the gang member was killed during a struggle that began after Hawkins stopped Thomas and other gang members from accosting a woman and her children near the family store.

Shortly afterward, Hawkins said, Thomas walked into an arcade adjacent to the grocery. As he tried to eject Thomas, Hawkins testified, Thomas pulled a sawed-off shotgun from the waistband of his trousers.

As he and Thomas struggled over the shotgun, Hawkins said, the gun went off, fatally wounding Thomas.

Prosecutors, however, produced a witness who testified that he saw Hawkins walk from the arcade to a nearby trailer, retrieve what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun and return to shoot Thomas.

Hawkins, who has a long criminal record, escaped from the minimum-security prison at Susanville, where he was serving a sentence for robbery, in 1971. Two years later he escaped from the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, and prosecutors said before his trial for killing Thomas that Hawkins had twice tried to escape from county jails in Arkansas.

No further background was available from authorities on Gonzales and Bullock.

Times Staff Writers Nieson Himmel, Jack Jones, Michael Seiler and Robert W. Stewart contributed to this article.