Teen Choir Member Shot, Killed by Youths in Watts Schoolyard

A 17-year-old church choir member was shot and killed Friday afternoon after a group of teenagers intruded on a neighborhood basketball game at the 96th Street Elementary School in Watts, officials said.

The Los Angeles County coroner identified the youth as Jacguies Rutledge. Neighbors, who saw the body lying on the basketball court for two hours before being removed by coroner’s officials, said that Rutledge was well-known and liked in the neighborhood.

Playing Basketball

Police Lt. Robert Kimball said the victim and his friends were playing basketball about 3:30 p.m. when three other youths, believed to be 11, 12 and 14 years old, walked up on a sidewalk outside the school’s fence and started arguing with one of the players.

“It really doesn’t matter what the dispute was about--it was just a kids’ argument, it was not racial, not gang, not narcotics,” Kimball said. He said Rutledge walked over and tried to protect his younger friend.

“He said, ‘Cool it, you’re bigger than him,’ ” Kimball said. “As he starts to walk away with the younger kid, the 14-year-old pulled a handgun from his waistband and shot him.”

Friends Fled

Kimball said there were eight youngsters playing basketball and several children from 9 to 12 watching as the shooter and his friends fled.

A search of the area for the three intruders was unsuccessful, police said. However, officers said they had a lead on their identities. Some witnesses said the assailants fled in a white car.

One witness, who did not want to be identified, said he was in a grassy field across from the school, “watching birds, then I heard shots and happened to look.” He said he saw a dozen children running to escape.

Rutledge’s girlfriend, Cassandra Williams, 14, said he was not in a gang and did not take drugs.

“This is Watts, and people come here just to shoot anybody,” she said.

Sarah Baker, a neighbor who lived across from Rutledge on Firth Boulevard, said the victim went by the nickname “Jock” and was “no gang-banger,” street slang for gang member.

“He was a devout churchgoer,” Baker said. “He’d give everybody respect. That’s why I can’t understand why he got killed.”

Baker said Rutledge had been at her house earlier in the day but left to play basketball.

Aaron Simon, business manager at the church Rutledge attended, which is next door to the small yellow stucco house where he lived with his family, said the youth recently had been accepted for a position in the Job Corps and was awaiting his first day of work.

‘Really Nice’

“He was a really happy-go-lucky guy, really nice,” Simon said.

A fellow church member said Rutledge played drums and sang in the church choir.

“He was real funny and happy,” said the woman, who would identify herself only as Loretha. “He never bothered anybody.”

Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Guido Rivero said the youth “was killed by a bullet in the back of the head by an unknown-caliber handgun.”

The shooting was not the first at a school in the neighborhood, where gang warfare and drug dealing are chronic problems. Last Nov. 22, a few blocks away at 102nd Street School, a man died a few hours after being shot four times in full view of three kindergarten classes.

Asked whether the shooting on Friday frightened her, Lakisha McCoy, 11, a fourth-grader who plays near the basketball courts at the 96th Street School every day, said, “No, because I (have) seen this so many times that I’m not afraid.”