High School Athlete, 3 Others Held in Robberies

A Gardena High School football star was in custody Saturday after Hawthorne police arrested him in connection with a series of robberies that targeted pedestrians wearing jackets emblazoned with pro sports team logos.

Demetrius Boykins, 19, the 1990 Southern League football Player of the Year, was arrested Friday with three other men on suspicion of committing at least eight robberies in which pedestrians were confronted by assailants wielding tire irons, knives or “simulated firearms,” police said.

“I’m in shock,” Mike Sakurai, Gardena High’s football coach, said Saturday. “He’s been in a situation where he’s seen kids in the neighborhood making money the wrong way and he’s never been tempted. It doesn’t sound like him.”

The others detained were Daniel Johnson, 19, Eric B. Johnson, 20, and Andre E. Shows, 20, all of Los Angeles. Boykins and Daniel Johnson listed their residence as a house on 127th Street in Athens, an unincorporated area just north of Gardena where the arrests were made.

All four men were being held in the Hawthorne police station in lieu of $10,000 bail.

According to police, the arrests culminated an investigation by the West Regional Burglary Team, an interagency unit based in Hawthorne that includes Hawthorne police and the Sheriff’s Department. The unit staked out the 127th Street house for two months before raiding it and making the arrests Friday morning.

Hawthorne Police Detective Victor Valdez, who coordinated the operation, said that in a typical robbery, three to five assailants would spring from a car and accost a pedestrian--usually to steal a jacket bearing a professional sports team logo. Such jackets are highly prized among youths and in some cases sell at retail stores for more than $200.

Valdez said Saturday that the victim of one of the crimes, a man who was robbed of a small amount of cash, has already identified Boykins by picking out Boykins’ photo in a Gardena High School yearbook. A witness to another of the crimes identified the car carrying the assailants as belonging to Daniel Johnson, the detective said. It was that identification that led authorities to the residence.

Boykins, a senior, was a standout receiver, running back and free safety on the Gardena High football team and also played on the school’s basketball team. He drew the interest of football recruiters from universities including Kansas, UC Berkeley and Washington, but their interest waned when they discovered he did not have enough academic credits to satisfy their admission requirements, his coach said Saturday.

“As an athlete, he’s a big-time player,” Sakurai said. “He could be a Division 1 player. We had some very big schools interested in him until it was clear he wouldn’t qualify because of his grades.”