L.A.’s Gang Violence Claims Its 72nd Victim This Year; 2 Youths Seized

Henry Lee Hunter, briefcase in hand, was simply walking home from work when at least 10 shots were fired from a passing car, one striking him dead less than two blocks from his doorstep in Southwest Los Angeles.

About the same time, Geri Hasten, his girlfriend of four years, was calling him at home.

“The phone was ringing and ringing and he wasn’t answering,” Hasten said Tuesday. “Oh, God, no. If only I knew he was dying, alone on a sidewalk.”

Hunter, 35, a clerk at the Los Angeles County assessor’s office, on Monday evening became the 72nd person to die this year in gang-related violence in Los Angeles, police said. Another 37 have been killed in Los Angeles-area communities patrolled by sheriff’s deputies.

“He was just an innocent person walking, minding his own business,” said his weeping mother, Mary Burns-McGee, 51, who was reached by phone at her home in Imperial County. “L.A. is a bad place to live. A bad place.”

Burns-McGee said she shuddered Tuesday morning when she heard of the gang-related killing in her son’s neighborhood during a morning newscast.

“They didn’t give a name out. But I was thinking of Henry,” she said.

The shot that struck Hunter was allegedly fired by a 14-year-old boy who claims to be a member of a faction of the Crips gang, Los Angeles Police Detective Richard Marks said.

The teen-ager was being driven by a 17-year-old boy in a neighborhood just west of USC, territory of the rival Bloods gang, Marks said.

At 27th Street and Halldale Avenue, several young adults, two wearing red clothing that can signify Bloods gang membership, were talking in front of an apartment building.

“But these people were not gang members; it was a woman in a red sweat shirt and a man in burgundy colored pants,” Marks said.

Witnesses told investigators that the 14-year-old had a gun in each hand and fired repeatedly out the window toward the pair, missing them.

But Hunter, who was homeward bound to nearby 29th Street from his bus stop, was struck in the chest by a bullet and died at the scene, police said.

Witnesses provided police with a description of the getaway car--a maroon Ford Mustang.

The two suspects, whose names were not released because of their ages, were arrested 20 blocks away after a brief chase and booked on suspicion of murder. They were being held in Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. The 17-year-old did not claim to be a gang member, police said.

Hunter had worked for three years as a $1,400-a-month clerk in the assessor’s office and was on the verge of a promotion to senior clerk, his supervisor, Arthe Anthony, said. She described him as an excellent employee who was well like by co-workers.

Anthony added that Hunter enjoyed talking about sports and made a hobby out of studying the stock market. Police said he was carrying a copy of the Wall Street Journal when he died.

Hunter had rented a house on 29th Street for the last 10 years and took the bus to work daily, walking home about four blocks.

Hasten said that just last Friday, after an evening of dancing at a Wilshire Boulevard restaurant, she had warned Hunter to be careful.

She said she warned him about the dangers of gunfire on the streets. “But he was never afraid. He thought no one would bother him because he lived in the neighborhood.”