Shattered Lives : Jailed Teens’ Parents Search for Answers in Wake of Tragedy

Their parents could understand if they had spotted a pattern. Likedrug abuse. Or hard-core gang involvement. Or the persistent psychological and emotional problems that often accompany such erratic behavior.

But, since Jonathan Arrington, Hubert Phillips and Khalil Mohammed did not seem to belong to any of those categories, since they came from decent homes and loving families, it is difficult to explain the events two weeks ago that landed two of them in jail and left another dead.

How could they, their parents ask, have done what they’ve been accused of: rob two convenience stores in Escondido and a Vista cab driver; steal a car; lead a speeding convoy of police cars wailing down Interstate 5; and discuss a suicide pact that police believe Mohammed followed?

“I haven’t figured it out,” said Bob Phillips, the deputy district attorney who is prosecuting the teen-agers. “It’s all pretty senseless. You look at the backgrounds, and these are kids who had options. They weren’t stuck in ghettos. They had the availability of scholarships. It makes you wonder what went wrong.”

What went wrong has weighed heavily on those who still are sifting for clues involving the teen-agers. Educators don’t know what happened. Parents are baffled. Coaches are confused.

Johnathan Arrington, who is an assistant high school principal used to dealing daily with other students’ problems, has trouble accepting his own son’s dilemma. Charlie Phillips, Hubert’s father, has so far refused to visit his son in jail.

Sultana Mohammed, Khalil’s mother, cannot believe she has just buried her 17-year-old son.

Phillips, 19, a first-team All-Metro Conference running back who had a football scholarship at the University of New Mexico, is in the South Bay jail, held on $100,000 bail. Arrington, 19, a standout defensive back at Southwest High who won a scholarship to his father’s alma mater, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, is in the County Jail in Vista, held on $105,000 bail.

Each is charged with three counts of armed robbery and one count of stealing a car. Phillips also is charged with failing to yield to the police caravan.

Another of the boys’ friends, Raul Olave, 18, is in County Jail downtown, held on $10,000 bail. He and Arrington are charged with robbing two convenience stores in Chula Vista. He also is charged with Arrington and Phillips with robbing someone of $20 at an automatic teller machine in National City, court records show.

The four teen-agers came from similar backgrounds, and all lived within 5 miles of one another and Southwest High School, which they all attended. Their parents, hard-working and middle class, said their sons lacked for nothing. Not an education. Not clothing or food. Not their full support. Delores Vazquez, Olave’s mother, had hoped to see her son in college this fall.

The teen-agers were frequent visitors to each other’s homes, often appearing as last-minute dinner guests. They excelled together on the football field. More than anything, though, they were the closest of companions, racing through the streets in Arrington’s gray Ford Festiva.

But hanging around together has meant trouble. In January, 1989, someone fired a bullet at Mohammed while he sat in Arrington’s car outside Sweetwater High School in National City, Arrington’s father, Johnathan, said. The bullet hit Arrington in the back of the head, but did not enter his skull. Arrington rode straight to Scripps Memorial Hospital for treatment.

Last July, police said, Olave and Arrington, over two days, robbed the Chula Vista convenience stores but came away empty-handed. The next day, they grabbed $20 from a man at an automated teller machine, police said.

And, two weeks ago, police said, a frantic freeway chase began in Vista and ended 50 miles away on the front lawn of Southwest High School, when their car hit a water main. Arrington darted from behind the wheel, and Phillips scrambled out of the passenger seat, police said. As they were getting out and preparing to run, they both heard a shot, their parents said. In the back seat, Mohammed was dead, an apparent suicide, police said.

Police said they found Arrington hiding in the bushes nearby. Phillips made it home, but a large number of police officers turned up that same night and escorted him to jail.

San Diego police are investigating whether Arrington and Phillips were involved in a series of hotel robberies along freeways between downtown San Diego and Mira Mesa. At one hotel, an off-duty Huntington Beach police officer was seriously wounded. No charges have been brought in those cases.

Asked what had gone wrong, each of the parents had a different opinion. None is certain he has the correct answer.

Arrington said his son, who excelled in high school track and football, let the pressure of his friends influence him.

“Jonathan had a problem all his life being placed in a gifted class, and he arranged to misbehave,” Arrington said. “It seems like it’s more attractive nowadays to be an undesirable person. Since he has not been a problem child his whole life, I think he feels a need to show the kids who have been in trouble that he can be a bad kid too.”

Arrington, a vice principal at Twain Continuation High School in Linda Vista, said he admired Jonathan’s friends and wouldn’t have let them into his house if he believed they had been a bad influence.

Because he deals with problem students every day in school, Arrington said he feels all the more helpless that he could not prevent his son’s actions. And he is deeply hurt by Jonathan’s arrest.

“We’ve never had a problem with alcohol. Never had a problem with drugs,” he said. “Nobody in my family has ever been in jail. I know very few people in any way who have been arrested or in trouble with the police. If I knew my son was having these types of problems, I would have taken care of it myself.”

The Ford Festiva, a gift from his parents, was Jonathan’s bad-luck charm, his father said. Although his father warned him that he was not to transport his friends, Jonathan’s buddies always persuaded him. His father even had a suggestion: “Get a girlfriend. Ride a girlfriend in your car, and the guys will be too embarrassed to get in.”

The night of the high-speed chase, Arrington was in a different car: a white sedan that police say he stole.

According to prosecutors and police, Hubert Phillips sat in the passenger seat during the chase.

Phillips, who flunked out of the University of New Mexico and lost his scholarship for disciplinary problems, had been an above-average student in school and outstanding on the football field, gaining 1,165 yards his senior year.

His senior year also brought bad grades and a lack of motivation. His football coach, Carl Parrick, said Phillips maintained a 3.0 grade point average through his junior year. He did so poorly his senior year that he barely managed to keep it about 2.0, the minimum he needed to stay in the football program.

His father, Charlie Phillips, a 25-year employee of Rohr Industries, which develops airplane engine prototypes in Chula Vista, is lost when asked to explain his son’s recent string of problems.

“If I could answer why he did what he did, I would patent it and sell it to every parent in the world,” he said.

Phillips had three assignments when he left San Diego for the Albuquerque campus, his father said: “To keep his nose clean, get an education and carry the pigskin.”

At New Mexico, Phillips was redshirted during the fall and suspended by spring for discipline problems, according to Greg Remington, the school’s sports information director.

Those close to him at the university said Phillips developed a problem with alcohol, couldn’t get to class on time, slept late, fought with others and lost his ambition. Despite his problems, nobody could believe Phillips would land in jail.

“He was not a gang guy,” said one person at the campus who watched Phillips. “He just wasn’t motivated. He was more of a follower than a leader.”

Charlie Phillips strongly disputes that his son had a problem with alcohol.

“Hubert never had a drinking problem,” he said. “I went to the campus for a visit, and I saw that everyone went to parties and stuff. You’re 18 years old, and you’re leaving home for the first time, and parties are going on. Of course, you’ll be participating. But Hubert knew right from wrong. He was not a dumb kid.”

Phillips has not yet visited his son in the South Bay jail and has talked to him on the telephone only once.

“Don’t you think I could put up $10,000 to get him out of jail if I wanted to?” he asked. “I’m something of a disciplinarian.”

Phillips and Arrington are angry about allegations by deputy district attorney Phillips that Mohammed killed himself in a suicide agreement that their sons had discussed.

Phillips: “That’s asinine. A farce. Never, ever, ever in a thousand years would Hubert commit suicide.”

Arrington: “Jonathan had no reason to commit suicide. Jonathan had every reason to live. If he had been missing something in life, like love, or a home, or food, if we turned him down for any reason, I could understand. I’ve talked to every kid around. Nobody has heard Jonathan talk like that.”

Prosecutor Phillips said the suicide pact is fact.

“We’ve got information that it’s true, and it was something they talked about,” he said. “If I got into any more of it, I would be giving out evidence that is to come out at trial.”

Arrington and Phillips also both have a hard time believing that Khalil Mohammed was a gang member, as police have asserted, and say their sons never were in a gang.

Both were wary of Mohammed because of his brilliant mind and charisma, a leader who could get others to do his bidding. But they both personally liked him and often invited him to dinner at their homes.

“We always heard he was a gang member,” Phillips said. “But I never saw any colors or any hat pulled down over his eyes.”

San Diego police tell a different story.

Mohammed formed a multiracial gang of blacks, Hispanics and Filipinos called “Four Corners of the World” which got involved in territorial fights with other gangs, according to Sgt. Art Palmer of the Police Department’s southern division.

“Paco,” as he was called, was the natural leader of the group because of his large physical build and charm, Palmer said. Palmer said the gang was not into drive-by shootings but rather an occasional rumble.

“I have nothing that leads me to think he would have become another John Dillinger,” Palmer said. “He was more the leader that would get something started and not be there when it happened.”

The boy’s mother, Sultanta Mohammed, is enraged by such talk.

“The police have made him out to be a gang member. My son was not a gang member,” she said last week. “It’s a vicious lie! He was a good boy who went wrong. He was troubled.”

She will not say much more. Sultana said she has told police that they should not have spread rumors about her son.

“They told all the parents that my son was in a gang, or for their kids to be careful and stay away,” she said. “Those other boys are responsible for their own actions.”

Upset by her son’s death and the publicity it has generated, she looks worn.

“I’m going through a lot right now. Enough is enough,” she said. “My son’s dead. Nobody’s going to get the story straight.”

Khalil’s brother, Sultan, was so disillusioned with his younger brother that he kept his distance, according to Bill Kinney, head coach at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, where Sultan plays football.

“I know he was opposed to his brother’s group of guys,” Kinney said. “He said, ‘Coach, we haven’t been close for a number of years. I tried to be a big brother to him, but he won’t listen to me.’ He said his brother had been out of control for a number of years.”

Sultan declined a request to be interviewed.

Delores Vazquez has told her son Raul Olave that Mohammed’s death should not be in vain.

When she thinks of her son, a high school graduate who had enrolled this fall at Southwestern, possibly robbing or stealing, she shakes her head.

“I think he was hanging with the wrong crowd,” she said. “Individually, they were fine, nice boys. Together, they weren’t good for each other.”

At Southwest High, Principal Alan Goycochea had only been on the job four days at the South San Diego school when the high-speed chase ended up on the lawn near his office.

New to the job, Goycochea doesn’t personally know any of the young men.

“One teacher wrote to me, ‘We have a real sense of loss that we just can’t explain,’ ” Goycochea said. “A teacher who said, ‘Here’s a youngster I worked with. Here’s someone I helped prepare for college and helped with SATs. They all had ambition.’ ”

“Like most good teachers, they have a sense of ‘Where did we go wrong?’ ” he said. “But I would say that we all choose for ourselves. We make difficult decisions every day, and there are consequences to every decision we make. In this case, these kids made some very bad decisions.”