MOTHER’S MANHUNT : She Tracks Down Suspect in Stabbing of Teen-Age Son

Driven by anger and a desire for vengeance, Carla Maciel searched the streets of Wilmington into the night Saturday, looking for the man who earlier that day had stabbed her 14-year-old son Nathan as he rode his skateboard in scenic Alondra Park.

Night turned to day, but Maciel’s resolve did not fade. She drove her van, accompanied by her roommate and followed by neighbors who joined the quest in their own cars, from one homeless encampment to another, diligently questioning transients.

By Sunday afternoon, after 24 hours alternately spent searching and visiting her son at the hospital--long after all but one of her friends wearily abandoned the effort--the mother-turned-detective found her suspect.

She had been tipped off by the transients in the park whom her son had befriended and who gave her a description of the suspect and hand-written directions that led her to him.

“I was terrified,” Maciel, 32, a cardiovascular technician at St. Vincent Medical Center, said in an interview Tuesday. “But my son was stabbed, and I wanted to find this guy. . . . Until this guy was found, I couldn’t handle it. . . . It was mother’s instinct.”

Rather than confront the suspect herself, Maciel immediately called Los Angeles police, who arrived and arrested him. Paul Turner, 50, was charged Tuesday with attempted murder, said Deputy Dist. Atty. William Gustafson.

An avid fisherman, Nathan frequently cast his line in a catfish-stocked lake at Alondra Park over the past seven years, making friends with homeless people who live there, he said.

Saturday afternoon, Nathan rode his skateboard to the park--directly across Redondo Beach Boulevard from his house--and approached a group of homeless park residents to ask about a fish fry they were planning. Among the group was a man named Paul, Nathan said, whom he had seen once or twice before.

“I went over to talk to my friend Russell,” Nathan said. “All of a sudden, Paul said, ‘Get out of here, we don’t want you here, take your skateboard and leave.’

” . . . I saw the knife, but I didn’t think he was going to stab me.”

After he was stabbed, Nathan said, other park residents rushed to his aid while Paul went to his van and drove away. Nathan was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where he underwent surgery for a collapsed lung, his mother said.

As Nathan was recovering, Maciel went back to Alondra Park.

“I wanted to find out what the hell happened,” she said.

Joined by her roommate, Violet Brown, and about a dozen of their neighbors, Maciel began searching for Nathan’s attacker. Her son’s fishing buddies described a pot-bellied man with a Southern accent who drove a van with Kansas license plates.

Close-Knit Group

“They’re apparently a pretty close-knit group of people,” Gustafson said. “When they saw this boy--one of their companions--stabbed, they thought it was terrible.”

Maciel said determination to catch the attacker overrode her fear.

“Me and Violet and every neighbor we had were out looking at every park, relentlessly searching for this man, driving up and down every street in Wilmington all night long,” Maciel said.

After checking on her son, Maciel went back to the park, where a homeless couple relayed a handwritten message telling Maciel that she would find the attacker at a park at Avalon Boulevard and I Street.

Maciel’s neighbors, exhausted from the previous night’s search, returned home, leaving Maciel and Brown alone to look for the attacker in an area she described as rife with drug users.

‘Scary People’

“The scariest of scary people were out there,” Maciel said. “A man was free-basing cocaine right in broad daylight.”

Maciel, who watched police arrest her son’s alleged attacker, said she was “hysterical.”

“Once they got him handcuffed, I was relieved, crying because I was so happy that this man wasn’t loose,” she said.

On Tuesday, Nathan, still in his hospital gown, was released from the hospital. His mother drove him immediately back to Alondra Park, where he thanked his homeless friends for their help.

“I just hope there’s no one else like (the attacker) over there,” Nathan said of his friends at the park. He added that he was impressed with his mother’s sleuthing skills and her courage.

“I think my mom’s pretty brave,” he said.