Boy, 11, Found Slain After Heading for Home Alone

Slight of build, but determined to walk home from school without adult supervision, William James Tillett had always kept his promise to call his parents at work the moment he arrived at their Inglewood home.

So when the 11-year-old didn’t call by 3 p.m. on Thursday, his parents, Hubert and Ruth, began to worry. An hour later, after his parents returned home to find that William still had not called, a chill came over Hubert Tillett.

“I just had a cold feeling that something was wrong,” Tillett said Friday. “I said, ‘We’ve got to look for Billy.’ ”

Six hours later, the search by family, friends and police ended with word that the body of the 4-foot 8-inch, 70-pound youngster had been found in a dark carport in Hawthorne. There were no obvious signs of trauma, Inglewood police said, though the boy’s wrists showed evidence that he was bound before he was killed.

“You always think that your kids will bury you. You never even think you might be burying them,” Ruth Tillett said Friday afternoon. “Even though I’ve seen him, it’s so hard to accept he’s actually gone.”

As she spoke, her husband brought her the tiny flowers that William had picked for her on the way home from Kew Elementary School the day before he died. “This is yours, mom,” William told his mother as he gave her the flowers, she recalled.

On Thursday, William was driven to school by his grandfather. The fourth-grader left school about 2:40 p.m. and started the 10-block walk home with two of his friends.

Six blocks from home, near the Crenshaw Imperial Shopping Center, William said goodby to his two classmates and the children went their separate ways. It was the last time he was seen alive by family or friends.

“Walking home was very important for him,” said Anne Rodman, one of William’s teachers. “He wanted to show that he was not a baby anymore. He was in that independent stage of the growing-up process.”

His parents, who run the commissary at television station KCET in Hollywood, first became worried when their son did not call them at work. Later, when they got home and called authorities, their panic was sufficient to persuade Inglewood police that the boy was in danger.

“For anyone to report their son missing just a couple hours after school is unusual. But the mother was convinced something was wrong and she convinced our investigators to immediately begin a search,” said Inglewood Sgt. Harold Moret.

Police patrolled the route the boy took home each afternoon as family members and neighbors combed the area. “He’s lived here all his life,” said Ruth Tillett. “Everyone knew him. But no one saw him after school.”

About 10 p.m., Hawthorne resident Felipe Valle saw something he considered suspicious: a silver Datsun hatchback sports car pulled into a driveway at a carport near his home.

“Without hesitation, the guys in the Datsun drove in like they live here,” said Valle, 34, a technical illustrator. “I thought it was strange because I know everybody who lives here.”

Valle said the car pulled into the driveway and backed up to a stall out of his view. The car quickly reappeared.

“The whole thing took less than 20 seconds,” he said. “As they were pulling out of the driveway, the driver stepped on it. Just gunned it.”

Valle ran to the carport, and found William on his side lying between two cars.

He summoned authorities, and paramedics unsuccessfully tried to revive William before taking him to Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center, where he was pronouned dead.

Homicide investigators said they did not know how the boy died.

The staff of Kew Elementary School tried to explain the loss to the school’s 320 students Friday morning. In the 11 classrooms, teachers read from an open letter from Principal Nancy Ichinaga.

“I know this is a very frightening story and many of you are shocked and upset,” the letter read. “We ask that you do not spread untrue, exaggerated . . . stories about what you think you heard.”

In teacher Anne Rodman’s classroom, where William learned to draw and write, classmates were asked to express their feelings on a chalkboard. “I love you William,” many students wrote, though one chose a different message: “Why did you leave?” They decorated the chalkboard with hearts and figures resembling cartoon character Bart Simpson, a favorite of William’s.

Of William, Ichinaga said: “He was really an innocent little kid, not sophisticated in the ways of the street. So I can’t imagine anyone was out to get him. He was just too innocent.”