Co-Workers, Church Members Mourn for Slain Tustin Minister

Church friends and co-workers of a Tustin minister who was robbed and shot to death in front of his wife in South-Central Los Angeles described him Saturday as a “super, extra faithful” person who devoted his life to his church and family.

An elder at the Greater Zion Apostolic Church in Santa Ana, David Eugene Thompson, 30, and his wife, Namora, had stopped at a phone booth near a gas station just before midnight Thursday to get help for church members whose bus had broken down, police reported.

After Thompson stepped into the phone booth, three armed males--believed to be in their teens--approached the couple and robbed them of about $30, then shot Thompson in the head. The killers fled in the Thompsons’ 1986 Hyundai, police said. Namora Thompson was not injured.

Police on Saturday had not found the killers, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division said, though the family car was recovered Friday in another part of the city.

The Thompsons and the church bus were returning from the 50th anniversary celebration of the Bethlehem Temple Apostolic Church in Los Angeles, where the choir from the Santa Ana church sang, choir members said Saturday.

Thompson, a mail cart driver who worked the overnight shift at Santa Ana’s central post office on Sunflower Avenue, had asked for the night off to attend the celebration, co-workers said.

“He was a quiet kind of guy, but he always had a smile on his face and kind words,” Tony Robinson, a mail handler who worked the same shift as Thompson, said. “Last night this place got real quiet, a lot of sad faces, people crying and all choked up.”

Harold Blackburn, also a mail handler, said Thompson was “one of the few who did his best to live up to his religion. He was really into his family; he really got a kick out of those kids.”

Workers at the post office said they have collected about $800 and are seeking more donations to give to Thompson’s widow and two boys, David, 3, and Michael, 2.

Church members who held a memorial service for Thompson on Friday night said the family was staying with Flo Walker, the children’s grandmother, in Garden Grove.

J. C. Smith, a minister at the Zion Church who breakfasted with Thompson almost every weekend, said he “was a real soft-spoken, warm-hearted person. I never heard him say anything against or about anyone. He was a good spiritual leader.”

Recorded Sermons

“Dave was super, extra faithful,” Bill Taylor, a church deacon, said. As the Sunday school supervisor who often engineered the church sound system to record sermons and choir performances, Thompson spent much of his free time at the wood-frame church, Taylor said. “He’d be here right now, on Saturday, and all through the week.”

Vernell Grimes, a choir member and minister who was on the bus Thursday night, said the vehicle sat disabled with battery trouble for about half an hour before the Thompsons came by.

Two passengers already had gone to seek help from the Bethlehem Temple church, but riders suggested that the Thompsons telephone their pastor, Morris Dulaney, because he had roadside insurance coverage for church vehicles, Grimes said.

“I asked to go with him but he told me he would be right back,” Grimes said. “Then he and his wife got back in the car and drove away and that’s the last I saw of him.”

Eventually, help arrived and the bus was fixed by 2:30 a.m. “We did not know he (Thompson) had met that fate,” Grimes said.

Prayers, Then Death

Thompson reportedly was praying the instant before he was killed.

“He was just praying, that’s all he was doing. The same as I was,” Mrs. Thompson was quoted as saying. “I heard David’s prayers, then the shot. I turned around and saw him go down.”

On Friday morning, Grimes’ wife, Louella, called him at work to tell him of Thompson’s death. “It hit me hard to the point where I couldn’t stay at work,” Grimes said.

“Nobody had a way of praising the Lord like he (Thompson) did,” Smith said. “We’re going to miss him and the community is going to miss him. He had it all together.”