Witness to a Grim Procession : In the Territory of Gangs, Funerals for the Too Young Have Become Too Common

He was 17, the victim of a July 4 drive-by shooting that police believe was gang-related.

Eight days later, he lay in an open casket in the Hobbs-J. S. Williams Mortuary in South-Central Los Angeles as the mourners filtered into the weathered, white-stucco Chapel of Blessed Quietness on Compton Avenue.

His tearful family was there. So, too, were his friends, 20 or so young men dressed in blue and white, blue bandannas hanging from back pockets, gold “C” initials dangling from neck chains.

‘It’s Got to Stop’

“I want to say this,” the Rev. Anthony Moss said as he delivered the eulogy, his voice growing to a harsh crescendo in the packed room. “I’m praying that God will bless our society and our communities to be much better than what they are. The gang activity, the shooting and killing one another--churches have got to stop it. It’s got to stop! It’s got to stop!”

This wasn’t the first such sermon that Moss has delivered, and it won’t be his last.

It’s the troubling nature of the funeral industry that when people die, business is good. And it has been too good this year in South-Central Los Angeles, where some funeral homes say they have been deluged with a business they could do without: Victims of gang violence.

Gang-related violence in the area has soared in the last two years. Police estimate there are an average of two drive-by shootings daily. There were 205 gang-related homicides in L.A. in 1987; through just May this year, there have been 96.

Many of them have been young people, like the youth whose face stared out of the memorial programs that sat in mourners’ laps Tuesday at the Hobbs-J. S. Williams mortuary. “In Loving Memory,” the program said. It also showed a picture of the dead youth, who could not have been more than 15 when the photo was taken, his cherubic face beaming. He was the youngest of four children.

“He was 17,” Moss said. “That’s a young age to leave this world. You don’t have to go like he went. Until something is done with our lives and in our communities, we’ll be back here. . . . It won’t be him next time, but it might be one of you. . . .”

As he continued to address the crowd, at least four officers from the gang investigations unit of the county Sheriff’s Dept. kept a careful watch from their unmarked cruisers. The police are becoming as common as pallbearers at some South-Central funerals; they comb the crowds for suspects and try to prevent yet more violence from occurring.

Kenneth Pitchford, 26, has witnessed the scene too many times. He has been a funeral director at the 87-year-old Hobbs-J. S. Williams home for eight years and is co-pastor with his father at Greater Hopewell Baptist Church.

In the last two years, he has seen the gang-related deaths grow. On occasion, the small neighborhood mortuary where he works buries five gang members in a week. He also sees the gang violence spill over into the funeral services, what is supposed to be a time to grieve in peace.

“We’ve had funerals where they try to shoot each other at the cemeteries, at the church,” said Pitchford, a tall, lanky man.

He said violence also has occurred when gang members in funeral processions have flown their colors--red or blue cloths tied to car antennas--while driving through “the wrong neighborhood.” At another funeral home, some gang members broke in and damaged the body of a former gang member.

“Here, we’ve had cops who have had to come in to take people out because they were armed,” he said. “I’ve also seen people pouring blood on the casket. The family all went haywire and ran to the car because they didn’t know what was next. At another one, they turned the casket over at the gravesite. It shows you how much respect they have for funerals.”

Still, he said, he and others hope the solemn ceremonies can make a point, that they can persuade area youths that the gang- and drug-related killings must stop. Not long ago, some area mortuaries and churches even organized a procession of hearses, one carrying a casket, to drive up and down the neighborhood streets. The funeral train stopped at local schools.

The Message

“The message was ‘Down on Dope, Up on Hope,’ ” Pitchford said. “This is an area where people need to hear it, right around here. We try to let them know that people were dying.”

Did the message come through? “Yeah, it did,” he said, confidently nodding his head. “People talked about it. . . .”

In his funeral sermons, he said, “I don’t talk about the gangs because they already know about the gangs. They know exactly what they’re doing, exactly what they’re involved in. But I kind of give them the hope of the message that there’s a way out. Because once you get in, there are a lot of people who feel there’s no way out.”

Pitchford picked up a blue loose-leaf book and flipped through some recent death certificates, commenting on each.

“This guy died of a gunshot wound, he was a dope dealer. And this guy was stabbed in the chest. He was a real holy-roller, he went to my church. He was a dope dealer. This guy died of a cerebral trauma. He was hit in the head, then run over by a car. I think he was wearing the wrong colors while he was walking home one night.”

Former Classmates

For 26-year-old Pitchford, the gang-related killings are especially tough. He grew up in the dingy neighborhood of small, run-down homes and abandoned warehouses. He graduated from Locke High School on 111th Street. He now sees his former classmates shipped to his mortuary from the coroner’s office.

“It’s rough,” he said, “because you love and you like a person and you’ve been around them so long and hope for a change. And a lot of them do change. My father’s a pastor, and a couple of my schoolmates who are real tough will come to church. They’re still tough and rough, but at least they come, they make an attempt.

“Then there are people from school that I know that maybe you thought they’d straighten out. But this year there have been about four that were murdered.”

Violence is nothing new for Pitchford, who saw horrible cruelties as far back as the sixth grade, when he witnessed a girl being beaten to death.

“When I was in high school,” he said, “there were about four or five people who got killed. There was a girl who was sitting in a car while her boyfriend was making a transaction. They came and shot her. It was a drive-by shooting. And I had wanted to date her. We even had a girl get hanged in our school, she was hanged on a tree. And when we walked to school this is what we saw.”

But he added, “It’s just gotten worse. It’s just getting worse.”

Some Can Escape

He has seen lives change; some gang members break free. Community programs and churches offer counseling for area youths to discourage them from joining gangs or to encourage them to leave. That still is not enough.

As the violence shows no sign of ending, mortuaries find they must routinely call upon police and special units to stake out funerals.

Detective Vern King of the Operation South Bureau CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) said he assigns 6 to 12 officers to monitor a funeral, “not for security reasons, but primarily for gathering intelligence. You never know who might turn up.

“We let ourselves be known,” he said, noting that the police presence acts as a deterrent to violence. King said families help keep the peace, too. “They know who might become disruptive. They talk to them, ask them to please show some respect.”

No disruptions occurred Tuesday at the funeral of the 17-year-old, though deputies did detain one suspect in connection with another case.

Inside the chapel, where the heat caused some mourners to fan themselves noiselessly, family members wept and the young men who stood in the entryway bowed their heads and shifted nervously.

Others Deliver Message

Besides Moss, several other clergy from the area came to the podium to try to persuade the young men and women to break away from gangs.

“I know some of your frustrations,” one said. “I’ve been there before. And I don’t care how big you ball your fist up, the devil’s got a bigger fist. I don’t care how many guns you get, the devil’s got a bigger gun. . . . There has to be some place in our lives that we decide to stop and do something better with it.”

“I used to be a gang banger,” another speaker said, pleading to the emotionless young faces. “I used to do drugs. But that’s not the way. It’s easy. But it ain’t the way.”

The Rev. Moss spoke again of the young man, resting in the casket not five feet from him.

“He was one that I loved myself,” he said. “He came to the church, and he came to the gang classes that we had on Wednesday night. He was seeking an answer. He came there with his curly hair, a handsome young fellow, one who was looking for a deeper truth.

“I believe there are many (of you who are) standing out here that are looking for something better. I want you to know that coke isn’t the way. I want you to know that crack isn’t the way. The corner isn’t the way. A .357 magnum isn’t the way. But Jesus said ‘I am the way.’

“We try to find peace in dope. We try to find peace and happiness in gang violence. But there is no peace there. There is no happiness there. For we all sit here and grieve and something’s got to happen. And something’s got to start right now.”