Jail Inmate Tie Hinted in Slaying : Witnesses Believe Victim Was Mistaken for Complainant

Compton police said Wednesday they were investigating whether a Los Angeles County jail inmate was connected to the shooting death of a 43-year-old father of three who was killed Tuesday night as he played dominoes with friends in the garage of a Compton home.

Witnesses to the shooting said the victim, Lynwood resident Persey Lee Williams, the oldest of seven children and an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines, was apparently mistaken for the intended target of the attack, Gary Taylor, a resident of the Grandee Avenue home where the shooting occurred. Two others were wounded in the attack.

Testified Against Inmate

Police and witnesses said Taylor had pressed assault charges against the inmate and recently testified against him at a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Compton Police Detective Jack McConnell said the preliminary hearing ended Monday and the inmate was ordered to stand trial on the assault charges.

Police, who declined to release the name of the inmate, said Tuesday’s killing may have been related to Taylor’s testimony.

Police did not give details of the inmate’s alleged involvement.

But McConnell did say that Williams and the two other victims were “probably not the intended victims.”

Residents of the modest home said they did not recognize the gunman, who came looking for Taylor a few minutes before the shooting.

“The dude came and asked for Gary,” said Victor Edwards, 24, Taylor’s brother-in-law. When told that Taylor did live there, Edwards said the man responded, “Tell Gary I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

McConnell said the gunman returned to the garage of the home about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and “began shooting indiscriminately” with an assault rifle, striking Williams in the chest.

Also wounded were Dee Little Dulim, 36, Taylor’s sister, who lives at the home, and Joseph Johnson, 40, of Compton, who was visiting.

Williams died an hour after the shooting at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. Johnson was in the hospital Wednesday in critical condition, suffering from wounds to the chest. Dulim was in good condition with a wound to the wrist.

Witnesses said that when the gunman returned to the home, he scaled a back yard fence and entered the garage, where Williams, Johnson and Dulim were playing dominoes on a small card table.

Nine Shots Fired

Witnesses said the man fired at least nine shots.

A 27-year-old man, who identified himself only as “J.D.” and said he was Dulim’s nephew, said he and about nine other friends and family members were inside the house when the shooting began.

“I went to the garage and there was the bodies,” J.D. said. Williams was slumped across a bed in the garage, while Dulim and Johnson were lying on the garage floor. Williams tried to stand up, but fell to the floor, J.D. said.

Taylor, the apparent target of the attack, was in the house at the time of the shooting but escaped injury. He could not be reached for comment.

Argument Over Yard Work

On Wednesday, Edwards, J.D. and other family members showed reporters four spent cartridges they recovered from the garage floor. There was also a bullet hole through a chair where they said Johnson was sitting, two bullet holes in a washing machine and two more in the wall of the garage.

Edwards said he believed the attack was connected to Taylor’s decision to file charges against a man--the jail inmate--after the two men had an argument over yard work earlier this year.

Williams lived a few blocks from the Grandee Avenue home in neighboring Lynwood, at the home of his mother, Ernestine Williams Bell, 64.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said as she sat in her living room, where about a dozen friends and relatives had come to console her.

“I can’t believe this has happened to him,” she said.