Gang Member Pleads Guilty to Killing Minister

A gang member has pleaded guilty to charges that he and two accomplices robbed and killed a minister as he recited a last prayer in a telephone booth after becoming stranded in South Los Angeles, prosecutors said Friday.

In return for Andre Moore’s guilty pleas Thursday, charges that he shot to death a second man hours after the minister’s slaying will be dismissed at sentencing.

Moore, as part of a plea bargain with the district attorney’s office, is expected to be sentenced to 32 years to life in state prison March 3, Deputy Dist. Atty. Joe Markus said. Although prosecuted as an adult, Moore, 17, could not receive the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the crime.

Moore pleaded guilty in Superior Court to the first-degree murder and robbery of David Thompson, an Orange County minister and elder at the Greater Zion Apostolic Church in Santa Ana. Moore also admitted robbing Thompson’s wife.

Markus said Thompson, 27, was slain shortly after his church bus broke down in South Los Angeles last April 9.

Thompson had gone to a telephone booth to call for help when he was accosted by the three assailants, who robbed him and his wife and shot Thompson to death as he said a prayer. The killers then forced Thompson’s wife from the bus and drove off with it, prosecutors said.

Hours later, the three shot to death Leopoldo Salgado, 49, of Los Angeles, during an attempted holdup outside a liquor store, Markus said. The defendants also allegedly attempted to rob and kill a friend of Salgado’s in the same incident.

As part of the plea bargain, charges stemming from the Salgado incident will be dismissed against Moore, prosecutors said.

Moore’s co-defendants, Todd Lavera, 22, and Tracy Carter, 18, remain charged in both murders. They face a pretrial hearing Monday at which Markus is expected to announce whether he will seek the death penalty against them.