16-Year-Old Held in Killing of Minister

A 16-year-old youth has been arrested in the killing of David Eugene Thompson, a Tustin minister who was robbed at a South-Central Los Angeles phone booth of $30 and shot as his wife looked on, Los Angeles police said Monday.

Detectives in the Newton Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said they arrested one male suspect Sunday in a South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood and were looking for at least two other youths in connection with the late-night killing last Thursday.

Thompson, 27, was shot in the head after three armed youths robbed him and his wife, Namora Thompson, 38, while they were trying to call for help for a disabled church bus from a phone booth south of the Los Angeles Coliseum.

“They came up to him and demanded money,” Newton Detective Morton Duff said. “We have a person in custody in connection with this, and we’re still looking for the other two suspects who were involved in the crime.”

Suspect Denies Gang Membership

The suspect in custody has denied that he is a member of a gang, police said.

Thompson, an elder at the Greater Zion Apostolic Church in Santa Ana, and his wife were returning from the Bethlehem Temple Apostolic Church in Los Angeles where the Santa Ana church’s choir had performed.

They had stopped to phone for help at a gas station at Slauson Avenue and Broadway, a heavily traveled intersection, about midnight after the bus carrying the choir had mechanical problems. As Thompson entered the phone booth, three armed youths approached the couple, robbed them and then shot Thompson, police said.

The killers fled in the Thompsons’ car, which was recovered Friday in Southwest Los Angeles, Duff said.

The suspect was in custody at Central Juvenile Hall Monday, with an arraignment tentatively scheduled for today.

“At this time, we have no knowledge of who the other two suspects are,” Duff said.

At a memorial service Friday, Thompson was eulogized as a “good spiritual leader,” one who never said “anything against or about anyone.”

J.C. Smith, a minister at the Zion Church, said Thompson was a “real soft-spoken, warm-hearted person.”

At the Santa Ana post office on Sunflower Avenue where Thompson was a mail-cart driver, co-workers said Monday that they had raised $1,000 they intend to give Thompson’s widow and his two sons, David, 3, and Michael, 2.