Mother of Suspected Sniper Kept Guns for Own Safety

The mother of one of two 14-year-old Pacoima boys who were arrested in separate sniping attacks that killed a delivery-truck driver and wounded a teen-age girl said Saturday that she kept firearms and ammunition in her apartment because she feared for her safety.

Police believe that one of the guns, a small-caliber rifle, was used Thursday to kill Mark Rodney Sanford, 26, of La Crescenta and to injure the 13-year-old girl--a passenger on a Rapid Transit District bus--a day earlier.

“I’m a single parent, and this is a bad neighborhood,” Carolyn Shelton, 36, said in an interview outside the apartment where police said the shots were fired.

With a picture of her arrested son mounted on the wall behind her, Shelton said she began keeping guns in the closet of her bedroom a month ago because she feared for her safety.

“Frequently, you see women getting beat, men getting beat. . . . You always see fighting or something. You can’t walk out--somebody says things to you. This is a rough neighborhood. Very rough. . . . I don’t have a husband.”

Shelton said the small-caliber rifle, a hunting rifle and an automatic pistol were kept unloaded. She said she hid the ammunition from her sons, ages 14 and 5.

“I always told them not to play with firearms, don’t play with guns,” she said.

Sometimes she hid the bullets underneath her mattress, she said. Other times she put them in the far corner of a closet and piled clothes on top.

Evidently, she said, her elder son knew where to find them.

On the afternoon of the fatal shooting, Shelton said, she was baby-sitting for a friend in an apartment in the same building. There was a knock at the door. It was her elder son.

“He came to me and he said he was afraid,” Shelton said. “I said, ‘Why?’ and he said his friend shot a man. He said, ‘Mama, he shot him from our apartment.’

“ ‘With the gun?’ I said, and he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Police Lt. Bernard Conine would not say which of the boys police believe pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting.

The killer took aim and fired a single shot as Sanford bent over to detach a truck cab from a flatbed trailer, police said.

Both boys are being held on suspicion of murder in Sylmar Juvenile Hall pending a detention hearing Monday or Tuesday, police said. In addition, police said, they would seek an attempted-murder charge against Shelton’s son, who is accused of firing at the RTD bus.

Shelton said she wants to talk to Sanford’s family but has been prevented from doing so by police. She said she had a message for Sanford’s family, which includes his father, Charles, a retired Los Angeles police detective, and a 7-year-old daughter by a previous marriage. The victim was engaged to be married in August.

“I’m so sorry, and if there’s anything I could ever do, . . .” she said, her voice trailing off. “I know I can’t make them forget about it, but I just wish I could help them ease some of that pain. . . . I just want that family to know that words just really can’t express how I feel about their son.”