Friends Mourn Boy Who Quit Gang : Violence: Norman Smith wasn’t a typical homeboy. His decision to quit wasn’t typical either; he made it out. But a few months later, he died in a gang-related shooting--at 17.

Gang members don’t spit-polish their shoes or print business cards or appreciate flower arrangements. But Norman Smith did. Gang members do fight and steal with their homeboys and spray-paint graffiti on their turf. Norman Smith did all that too.

Norman Smith, 17, had risen to platoon sergeant in Inglewood High School’s ROTC program. He held down a steady job at a local supermarket bagging groceries and setting up the flower displays. He gave out business cards to promote his disc jockey business.

But Norman was also a gang member. His identification card was on file with Inglewood Police gang officers. His bedroom was covered with graffiti. He flashed the hand sign of the Inglewood Trece Demon Locos in his living room right next to the framed picture of Jesus Christ.

“It just quaked the blood in my veins,” Richard Smith said of his son’s gang activity. “But I didn’t know how to stop him. . . . You just can’t wrap up your kids in cellophane and hide them in a closet at night.”

Ultimately, Norman decided on his own to get out of the gang. Last St. Patrick’s Day, after less than a year as one of the few Anglos in the predominantly Latino gang, Norman was voluntarily beaten up by his homeboys so he could leave the gang in what is known in gang parlance as “jumping out.”

Friday morning, Norman was praised for winning his personal struggle against gangs.

The words came at his funeral.

Norman died in a gang-related shooting last weekend, several months after he had eschewed the violence that gangs promote and relinquished his ties to his homeboys.

His funeral drew hundreds of mourners who knew different sides of Norman: teachers who said he always stood out, fellow students who considered him a friend and gang members who honored Norman as someone who had died for the set.

Norman’s involvement with gangs began a year and a half before his death. The exact date he was jumped into the gang is etched in graffiti in the hallway outside his bedroom: April 27, 1989.

His involvement with gangs, Norman’s parents recall, began as a way to join the “in” crowd at school. Although he denied membership in a gang at first, his parents said he began adopting some of their trademarks--wearing T-shirts and baggy pants and slicking back his hair. He adopted a know-it-all attitude and told his family that he could take care of himself.

When one of Norman’s friends later told his mother that Norman was in a gang, she immediately called the police. She told investigators the name of the gang and his nickname of “Snowman,” and asked for advice.

They told her not to pamper Norman’s gang friends or even allow them on her property. Less than a year later, at the breakfast table, Norman told his mother that his gang life was over.

But before it ended, Norman had been beaten up and shot at. He got in trouble for stealing stereo speakers from a school, a church and a car.

Still, although he adopted a tough exterior and acted macho around his gang-member friends, his mother said he never really changed. Even as a gang member, he would cut his homeboys’ hair and treat their injuries. He stayed away from alcohol and drugs and left the gang rather than commit violence, his mother said.

“He was no gangster,” his mother, Marlea Smith, said. “He may have done some little gangster activities, but he was no gangster.”

Finally, he decided to get out.

His mother remembers the day well. Norman was quiet at breakfast. He told her that his gang activity would end that day. He arrived home a bit sore, with his arms outstretched and a smile on his face. He told his mother: “I’m out. I can dress the way I want. I’m out.”

But getting out of the powerful reach of gangs was not as easy as Norman had thought. According to authorities, Norman was shot at 12:42 a.m. Oct. 13, after a post-football dance at Inglewood High School. The suspects remain at large.

When the party ended, Norman and four friends, who had been disc jockeys for the event, packed their speakers, synthesizers and other stereo equipment in the back of a pickup truck and headed home. A gray Buick began trailing the truck a few blocks from the school.

It pulled up next to them on the driver’s side and one of the passengers yelled out, “Where are you from?”

Recognizing the comment as an inquiry into gang affiliation, someone shouted back, “We’re from nowhere.”

But one of the passengers in the car pulled out a shotgun and fired several shots. As the Buick sped off into the night, the teen-agers discovered that Norman, who was in the back of the truck with two others, had been struck in the chest. His friends rushed to his home, knocked on the front door and carried his lifeless body to the living room couch.

Word of Norman’s death spread quickly.

On Monday, Inglewood High School Principal Kenneth Crowe held a moment of silence, telling students over the school’s public address system that Norman had been killed.

“Violence is senseless,” Crowe said in an interview later. “We have to learn how to peacefully coexist with individuals that we may have differences with. . . . This kind of thing is happening all over Los Angeles County. When it hits home, it hits hard.”

Students began a memorial fund in Norman’s name.

His co-workers at the Alpha-Beta supermarket at the corner of Arbor Vitae Street and Eucalyptus Avenue raised $375 in cash for the family, and Inglewood Park Cemetery, where Richard Smith works, donated the cost of burial.

Norman’s former homeboys even honored him, putting up graffiti at Inglewood High saying, “Norman--Rest in Peace.”

Corey Cook, 16, remembered Norman as pure spit and polish, an ROTC platoon leader who earned perfect 20s on inspections and trained many of the current leaders. Corey, who is now the second highest ranking ROTC member in the school, credits Norman with teaching him the fundamentals when he joined two years ago as a freshman.

“He taught me, and now I’m teaching other people,” Corey said in an interview on the Inglewood High campus.

Lili Gonzalez, 17, met Norman six months ago when she started work at the Alpha-Beta. She considered him a cheerful, uplifting person whom “you talked to once and he was a friend for life.”

“He didn’t throw his back to anyone,” said Jesse Gonzalez, 17, a gang member who attended the funeral. “Even after he left us, he got along with us. We didn’t have to be here but we wanted to pay our respects. He wasn’t a gang member but he died for (the gang).”

At his funeral, Norman’s family and teachers and friends wished out loud that Norman’s death would result in changes in others’ lives.

“No matter what you’ve done, what gang you’re in, how many drugs you’ve taken . . . there is nothing too bad for God. . . . Let Norman be an example to you,” one classmate said.

“The boy that shot him--I have no anger, no revenge,” Norman’s father said to the crowd packed into the Inglewood Mortuary Garden Chapel. “ . . . It is our deepest desire that these gangs will dissolve and go away.”

When Norman’s graveside service was over, Jesse and other gang members walked solemnly away to a nearby mausoleum. There they mourned the death of another homeboy who was killed during the past year in gang violence.