Youth Arrested in Slaying of Tustin Minister

A 16-year-old youth has been arrested in the killing of David Eugene Thompson, a Tustin minister who was robbed of $30 and shot in a South-Central Los Angeles phone booth 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 two other youths in connection with the late-night killing Thursday.

Thompson, 27, was shot in the head after three armed youths robbed him and his wife, Namora, 38, while they were trying to call for help for a disabled church bus from a phone booth at a gas station at Slauson Avenue and Broadway.

“They came up to him and demanded money,” 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.”

The youth in custody has denied he is a member of a gang, police said. The suspect was being held at Central Juvenile Hall Monday, with arraignment tentatively scheduled for today.

At a memorial service Friday, Thompson, an elder at Greater Zion Apostolic Church in Santa Ana, was eulogized as a “good spiritual leader,” one who never said “anything against or about anyone.”

J. C. Smith, a minister at the 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 they had raised $1,000 they intend to give to Thompson’s widow and his two sons, David, 3, and Michael, 2.