2 Gang Members Face Dual Slaying Charges

Two street gang members have been charged with murder in what authorities are calling the revenge killing last September of a South-Central Los Angeles minister’s wife and her teen-age son.

Eric Dicks, 20, who was arrested late Wednesday, and fellow gang member, Rodney Charles Glaze, 21, who was taken into custody last week, could face the death penalty if they are convicted of the double slayings, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said.

Prosecutors said Bessie Mae Ross, 54, and her son, David, 15, an aspiring actor, were gunned down in their West 51st Street home by two gang members who apparently believed that an older son, Tommy, 19, had slain a member of their gang four days earlier.

Michael Anthony Williamson, a third gang member, and Glaze also are charged with attempted murder for shooting at a rival gang member from their car three days before the Ross killings. The man, believed to be a member of Tommy Ross’ gang, was not hurt.

Prosecutors said the violence apparently stemmed from the fatal shooting of Stanford Bursey, 24, four days earlier in the parking lot of a Florence Avenue liquor store. Dicks, Glaze and Bursey were fellow gang members.

Revenge “was the motive after that,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David Milton said.

Gang members believed Tommy Ross was the triggerman in the Bursey shooting.

Prosecutors said the gang members were looking for Tommy Ross, who they believed was the trigger man in the Bursey shooting, when they visited the Ross house on Sept. 11.

“When they found Tommy Ross was not there, they fired on his mother and younger brother,” said Milton, a member of the district attorney’s hard-core gang division. “They shot whoever opened the door.”

Ross’ husband, Robert, a 71-year-old retired minister, and another son, Leamon, were not at home when the shootings occurred.

Tommy Ross was subsequently arrested and is awaiting trial for Bursey’s murder.

A preliminary hearing for the three gang members is scheduled for Feb. 7.