Shooting Is Far Away but Hits Close to Home

I never met Melinda Johnson, but I can’t get her out of my mind.

I sometimes think of her when I look at my own daughter.

They were the same age and their communities are only about 10 miles apart, but they lived in two separate worlds.

Melinda lived in South-Central Los Angeles, and my daughter lives in Glendale.

Melinda has haunted me since last fall when I talked to her mother in a little apartment on South Avalon Boulevard.

Physel Johnson is a preschool teacher. Her apartment is in one of those ordinary two-story complexes common to Southern California. The long narrow building is set perpendicular to the street. Stairs lead from Avalon Boulevard up to a walkway that runs along the second-floor apartments; another flight of stairs leads down to an alley in the rear.

Physel Johnson’s apartment is on the ground floor near the rear of the building. On an unseasonably warm night just over a year ago, she was sitting in her living room watching television while 15-year-old Melinda sat outside on the stairs talking to a girlfriend.

Melinda was an outgoing girl. She liked music more than school. She was sometimes sassy, and she ate too much junk food. She was, after all, an American teen-ager.

That night, Melinda was sitting at the top of the backstairs. Her mother was always warning her not to sit in front near the street because of drive-by shootings on Avalon Boulevard.

Physel Johnson was watching “Miami Vice” when she heard gunshots outside, a common sound in her neighborhood.

“Usually they didn’t faze me,” she said. “Because usually they sound like they’re in the distance and my children are not outside. But that night they sounded like they were in my front door.”

Physel Johnson rushed outside. Melinda was lying at the top of the backstairs.

“I just saw her laying there. . . . I guess I emotionally blacked out because I didn’t see any blood.”

Melinda was dead. Her girlfriend was wounded.

In a Times story rounding up that weekend’s violence in the inner city, Police Sgt. Ted Amstone called Melinda’s death “just another useless killing in South-Central Los Angeles. They were just sitting there minding their own business.”

Months later when I talked to Physel Johnson, she was still trying to deal with her daughter’s murder. She was taking it, she said, one day at a time. She didn’t know if anyone had been arrested for the shooting.

“I have just put it in God’s hands,” she said.

It is also in the hands of the police, but there have been no arrests and there are no suspects.

“She just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Detective Bill Cox, whose caseload includes Melinda’s murder. “They just drove down the alley and shot and killed her. . . . “

Cox works out of South Bureau homicide and is used to such shootings.

“I’ve been going at it a long time,” he said, “and I’ve gone out many a time when innocent bystanders get shot.”

When Cox goes home to his own community, he doesn’t think about the killing fields of South-Central.

“If I took it home and thought about it,” he said, “I’d probably go nuts.”

Physel Johnson also tries not to think about the gunfire on the streets outside.

“I have learned to--I hate to say tune it out--but there are times I don’t hear anything,” she said. “My neighbor will say, ‘Did you hear that?’ and I didn’t hear anything.”

In my home in Glendale, I occasionally watch “Miami Vice.” But the pastel, stylized violence stays safely behind the television screen.

There is, of course, crime in my community. But I don’t hear gunfire on the streets at night.

My own daughter has just turned 16. She is outgoing. She likes music more than school. Sometimes she is sassy, and she eats too much junk food. . . .

“She just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Detective Cox said of Melinda.

The wrong place was her own backstairs.

There are times when I look at my daughter across the dinner table and wonder what it would be like to have to warn her not to sit outside the house because she might be shot.

I can’t get Melinda Johnson out of my mind.