Turner Family Lives on Wrong Side of the Law

There was only one left.

Of the nine Turner brothers who came to Los Angeles from Detroit with their mother more than 17 years ago, three are dead--the latest killed on Tuesday--and five were in custody.

Only “Little John” Turner, 21, the youngest of the nine, was still on the street Friday night. And lawmen feared he was armed, injured and angry.

The Turners were well known in their neighborhood--by the locals who considered them a loyal family--”with a couple bad apples,” said a neighbor--and by the people who arrested them, who considered them more than just bad apples.

To neighbors, they were the “Turner Boys,” brothers who walked together and stuck together and, said one young girl, “didn’t let outsiders mess over anybody around here.” That included stray gang members the Turners ran off their block.

To the authorities who arrested them time after time, they were a crime wave unto themselves--burglary, arson, drug peddling and robbery. Their narrow wood-frame house in Watts was always sure to yield a harvest of urban mayhem: drugs and Uzis and AK-47s, authorities said.

John, the suspect in the torching of a sheriff’s deputy’s car earlier this week, was arrested without incident by a Los Angeles Police SWAT team at 7:25 p.m. Friday and was booked on suspicion of arson and narcotics-related charges.

Their father, James, died years ago, shot to death somewhere around Detroit, leaving his wife, Bea, with nine boys to bring up. She brought them up mostly on welfare, and they became one of the toughest, poorest families in a tough, poor part of town. The “Turner block” is what the neighbors came to call that stretch of East 99th Street.

“Coming up like they came up, they learned to take care of they own selves,” a neighbor said Friday.

One by one, most of the Turner boys dropped out of school, some as early as seventh grade, another neighbor said. One by one, they were arrested, from the youngest, arrested at age 11 for battery, to one of his brothers charged last year with murder, authorities said.

Vernon Turner faces trial next month, and perhaps the death penalty. Last June 21, he allegedly ordered a couple to lie face down outside their car at a gas station, shot the driver point-blank with a sawed-off shotgun, then drove off in the car. He took it back to the Turner block, deputies say, where he stripped it and adorned his brother Joseph’s car with the stereo and wheels before dumping the auto not far away.

Andrew, deputies said, is in jail on a drug offense, Larry for burglary and Noah for arson. James Jr. was shot to death on the street, like his father, and David, neighbors said, shot himself a few years back.

By last Tuesday, that left Moses, John and Joseph, who deputies said has been arrested six times in eight years.

That afternoon, sheriff’s deputies showed up at the narrow house with its peeling paint, looking for John to arrest him on a narcotics charge.

John wasn’t there, but Joseph and Moses were.

Moses ran out the back, outrunning a deputy in pursuit. Joe, clad in his undershorts, hid in the attic. He broke through the attic and a deputy ordered him to halt. Joe was shot as he turned to reach back into the attic; the deputy believed he was reaching for a gun.

Joe was unarmed. “He was just trying to hide,” said a neighbor. “He didn’t want to get arrested again.”

An hour later, officers outside the house came under fire from an automatic weapon aimed from down the street. The bullets struck a passing California Highway Patrol car, but not the occupants. “Little John” was allegedly the triggerman, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Steve Grenier said.

John, too, was the man who torched an unmarked sheriff’s car parked later that night near the Turner house, said detectives, who have added that to the list of John’s alleged offenses.

“A lot of people (were) on the street that night,” a neighbor said scornfully. “Anybody could have burned it up.”

John suffered burns in that car fire, a sheriff’s official said.

Moses was taken into custody Friday for questioning about his brothers.

Joe’s funeral is set for next Wednesday. He had two small daughters; “He was the good one,” a neighbor remarked.

In fact, the young men and women who gathered outside the boarded-up house Friday weren’t afraid of the Turners; they identified with them.

“Everybody in Watts have a rap sheet,” one young woman said.

“The sheriffs, they could do one of us the way they did Joe,” said one young man who said he had been taken in for questioning with Moses and was the one to tell Moses that Joe was dead.

So, only “Little John” was still on the street.

His former girlfriend, Jonellda Block, 17, worried that John, too, will die by the gun--perhaps by his own hand, like his brother David. “John’s been thinking about it, killing himself. I know.”

People just don’t always understand the Turner boys, she said; “You’d see them on the street as hard core, but they have feelings, too. They’re real gentle people when you get to know them.”