5 of 6 Muslims in Clash With Deputies Freed

County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against one of six males arrested in a clash with sheriff’s deputies that left one member of the Nation of Islam dead and another wounded, but they declined to charge the others because of insufficient evidence.

Five men and a 15-year-old boy, all members of the Nation, had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a fracas that erupted early Tuesday after two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies stopped a car driven by Nation member David Hartley, 18, for a minor traffic violation in the Athens district south of Los Angeles.

The deputies said they were attacked by a group of men who came out of a nearby apartment complex in the 1100 block of West 106th Street shortly after they stopped Hartley. When a handgun was allegedly taken from one of the deputies in the scuffle, that deputy drew a backup pistol and fired five shots. Hartley was wounded in the shoulder. Another man, Oliver Beasley, 27 and also a member of the Nation of Islam, was fatally shot in the head.

Hartley was the only man charged in the case because he was the only one involved in the incident that the deputies could clearly identify, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Schirn.

“The officers were attacked from behind and they were only able to identify one of the men involved,” Schirn said.

“The officers were very forthright,” Schirn said. “They said very candidly, ‘The only man we can identify is Mr. Hartley. We were fighting for our lives.’ ”

The other four men were released from custody late Wednesday. The teen-ager was released several hours after the incident.

At an arraignment in Inglewood Municipal Court on Thursday, Hartley pleaded not guilty to one count of removing a firearm from an officer, one count of battery against an officer and one count of resisting an officer with threats of violence, all felonies, Schirn said. Each of the charges carries a maximum penalty ranging from 16 months to three years in prison, Schirn said.

Hartley’s attorney, Omar Bakari, had sought to have him released on his own recognizance. Judge Wardell G. Moss denied that request but did agree to reduce Hartley’s bail to $3,000 from $10,000.

Diamia Croslin, Hartley’s mother, described her son’s arrest as “just a mix-up,” and added: “It will be cleared.”

“I’m very sad about all this, because I have always tried to teach David obedience to the law. . . . David would not have become a Muslim were it not for their obedience and strict moral and dietary code,” said Croslin, a school teacher.

Bakari said prosecutors had no legitimate reason to charge his client with any crime.

“They have to have some reason why they shot him,” Bakari said. “They can’t shoot him and not charge him because that would be tantamount to an admission that they did something wrong.”

In fact, Schirn said, he charged Hartley with removing a firearm from an officer despite the fact that sheriff’s investigators, in presenting their case to the district attorney’s office, were unable to prove that he took the gun.

All Equally Culpable’

Sheriff’s officials had said earlier that one of the men who came out of the building took the gun.

“It doesn’t make any difference (if Hartley did not take the weapon),” Schirn said. “If you are acting in concert with others, and one of them removes the gun, they are all equally culpable.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Frank Merriman, who is heading an internal investigation into the shooting, said that although the men were originally booked on suspicion of attempted murder, prosecutors later decided that charge was not supported by evidence. He added that the district attorney’s decision to file charges against only one of the suspects was understandable.

“The fact is we presented evidence against all of them and it was deemed insufficient at this time,” Merriman said. “But that does not bar the development of additional evidence to seek charges at a later date.”

Merriman added that “we are still seeking other suspects; we believe there are one or two others that we may have enough evidence to prosecute.”

Nonetheless, Merriman acknowledged that, as it stands, “we don’t have a lot of evidence.”

Officials of the Nation said they felt vindicated by the decision not to charge the four men. The officials also alleged Thursday that for weeks before the incident, deputies had been harassing the Muslims, who use the apartment on West 106th Street as a base for a team of Muslims who are trying to reform gang members.

“They had to let them go because they hadn’t done anything wrong,” said Khallid Muhammad, special assistant to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Muhammad contended that sheriff’s deputies had been “driving slowly” by the apartment building “sneering at the brothers” in the weeks before the shooting. That activity, he said, had picked up considerably after a Jan. 3 confrontation between Los Angeles police officers and a group of Muslims that resulted in injuries to four officers and three Muslims.

Sheriff’s Capt. Walter Lanier denied that deputies had been intimidating the Muslims.

“We didn’t even know they had an (apartment) there.” Lanier said. “That issue was never brought up” in a meeting Wednesday with Muslim leaders.

According to Muhammad, “the entire neighborhood” had come to the defense of the Muslims on Tuesday morning after a deputy allegedly began to beat Hartley for refusing to lie face down on the ground.

“We have a prayer position in which we go down on our knees and touch our foreheads to the floor,” Muhammad said. “We don’t bow down to anyone except Allah.”

Thursday was the first time that Muhammad, or any other official of the Nation of Islam, has publicly talked about the incident.

Both the Jan. 3 incident, which involved 13 Muslims and 24 police officers, and the shootings Tuesday morning have galvanized activists and residents in Los Angeles’ African-American community.

At a community rally Thursday night at First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Joshua Muhammad, 15, one of the people arrested Tuesday morning, addressed the audience of about 500.

“They (sheriff’s deputies) were spitting on me . . . I don’t go for that.”

He said officers used excessive force.

“When the policeman walked up to me, he told me to get on my knees. I thought he was just going to put the handcuffs on me. But he hit me in the ribs with his club and threw me on top of a police car.

“He had the nerve to threaten to rip the back of my head off and put a bullet in it,” the teen-ager continued. “He hit me in the head. Then they started hitting my brothers. I got mad. It was the first time that I wanted to kill somebody.”

The meeting was attended by many community leaders, including Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Joe Duff, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP.

Nation of Islam leaders and others announced a campaign to make Beasley a symbol of police brutality and black resistance.

According to Khallid Muhammad, Beasley was recruited into the Nation a few months ago. He went to the apartment building Tuesday after an evening of selling tickets to a scheduled Feb. 2 appearance by Louis Farrakhan at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Times staff writer Darrell Dawsey contributed to this story.