AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : Sad Task of Burying the Dead Begins : Funerals: Three young men with little in common, except that they were among the first to die, are memorialized.

A weary city set about the business of memorializing its dead on Wednesday in funerals from South Los Angeles to Koreatown to the San Fernando Valley, honoring young men with little else in common than that they were among the first to die in last week’s riots.

In Koreatown, 5,000 mourners turned out for the funeral of Edward Song Lee, an 18-year-old college freshman killed in a crossfire of bullets from the guns of police, security guards and looters while he was answering a cry for help from an embattled Koreatown merchant.

In San Fernando, a Catholic Mass was held for Edward Travens, 15, shot at the wheel of the Cadillac his uncle had given him--a distraction intended to cultivate his interest in cars and put distance between him and friends in gangs.

And in South Los Angeles, several dozen anguished youths stormed out of an emotional funeral for Louis Watson, 18, vowing blindly to avenge his death. “Show Louis your respect,” the pastor urged. “ . . . If there is anybody here who feels like retaliating, forget it.”

Lee, Travens and Watson make up just a handful of the 58 people said to have died during the three days of rioting, which erupted last Wednesday after four white police officers were found not guilty on all but one charge in the beating of black motorist Rodney G. King.

The precise circumstances of the young men’s deaths remained unclear even as they were buried. Some suggested that Travens’ shooting was gang-related. As for Lee, police are unsure whether he was killed by a looter, another volunteer security guard or one of them.

“As far as I’m concerned, he was a riot victim,” Travens’ father, Allen, said in an interview. “(The riot) didn’t just stay in one place. A spark from a fire travels. This was the spark. And no matter what we find out, my son is still gone.”

In the numbing chronology of the riots, Louis Watson comes first. Police say he was the first to die in what was to become the worst civil disturbance in the United States in the 20th Century. According to his family, he died innocently at a bus stop, helping a woman get out of the riot-racked area.

Waiting at the corner of Vernon and Vermont avenues at about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, Watson was hit by a single bullet in the head, knocking him to the pavement. Some say the bullet ricocheted off a safe that some looters were trying to break into nearby; others say the details are unclear.

“It should never have happened, the way it went down,” said a 21-year-old man nicknamed Dumbo who attended Watson’s funeral Wednesday at the Figueroa Church of Christ. Said another friend, called Drama, “Nobody really knows what happened to Louis.”

Edward Travens was next. He was driving to a video store to rent a video with his brother, Allen, 21, and a friend, Dan Ortiz. At the intersection of San Fernando Road and Mission Boulevard in San Fernando at about 9:25 p.m., they were approached by a man on foot.

“All they heard was ‘Where you from?’ and ‘Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.’ ” said Travens’ uncle, Richard Ballasteros. Five bullets pierced Travens’ wiry body. Ortiz drove him to a hospital while Allen Travens cradled his brother in his arms. Eddie Travens died three hours later.

Lee died at about 10:30 p.m. the following night, responding to a report of looting at a business near the corner of 3rd Street and Hobart Avenue. Whoever shot him, friends and family believe he died because of the city’s failure to protect Koreatown.

“He felt it was his responsibility to protect other Koreans who could not defend themselves,” his mother, Jung Hui Lee, said in an interview after his death. “If he didn’t feel so strongly about being a responsible Korean, he would be alive.”

Louis Amiri Karimu Watson was the oldest of seven boys. His father, Louis, lives in Tuckerman, Ark. Watson lived with his mother, Sherry Ann Johnson, and his stepfather on West 43rd Street and was said to be employed by the county as an in-home support worker.

Friends said Watson had toyed briefly with a gang, then rejected it. His friend, Drama, said Watson decided “It wasn’t worth it. He didn’t want to die from gang-banging.” So Watson went back to school and to playing the drums, playing football and running track.

At Watson’s funeral, 600 people, many of them teen-agers, filled the church to capacity. The service began quietly, with testimony from friends and relatives. Then the grief and tension seemed to escalate to a point where the church was filled with the sound of weeping and wailing.

“Louis, now you know who your homies are,” called out a friend, identified as Glen Max One. “Whoever did this . . . is going to pay.” At which point, some 25 to 30 youths poured out into the street in what appeared to be angry, unfocused grief and rage.

As Watson’s body lay in the open coffin at the front of the church, two baseball caps and a BOYS2MEN cassette tape on his chest, police roared up to the church, stopped and searched the youths and arrested one on charges of possession of a weapon.

Watson would have turned 19 next Monday.

Edward Anthony Travens, too, was approaching a birthday. He was to turn 16 on June 9. Friends and relatives described him as extremely popular. His grandmother once took 27 telephone messages for him in one day--and that was just from the girls.

But Travens, whose father is Anglo and mother Latina, had struggled with the lure of gangs. His family pulled one way, some of his friends another. A county worker had warned that his short, slicked-back hair gave the wrong impression. So Travens was letting it grow.

“He walked the line,” said Manuel Velasquez, who works with Los Angeles County Community Youth Gang Services and had known Travens for several years. “Sometimes he was on one side of the line, sometimes he was on the other.”

“Rest in Peace, Eddie B,” reads a piece of graffiti on two Interstate 5 overpasses at Fox Street and Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The B in the slogan, also plastered on buildings in Travens’ neighborhood, refers to his mother’s maiden name, Ballasteros.

The day of the King verdict, Travens had cleaned the engine, waxed the body and shampooed the rug of the Cadillac. Then he had gone in to watch television with his family. When he saw rioters beating a truck driver senseless, Travens was appalled.

“Eddie said, ‘Why don’t the police come? Where’s the police?’ recalled his uncle, Richard Ballasteros, who lived with the Travens boys, their mother and her parents.

At Travens’ funeral, where he was buried with a car magazine in his coffin, friends disagreed on the role of the riot in his death. Asked if Travens would be dead if the King verdict had not come down, Velasquez said, “Most likely, yeah.”

“The other shootings were random shots,” he said. “This one, the guy walked up and shot him five times. This was not a random shooting.”

But Dan Ortiz blamed the riots.

“It was the right night for something to happen,” Ortiz said. “There were no cops around.”

In Koreatown, a similar theme was struck at Lee’s funeral. Prayers dwelt on the Korean-American community’s bitter sense of loss--a loss they believe was unnecessary and that they blame on the police for failing to protect their community.

Although born and raised in Los Angeles, Lee had been raised traditionally. His parents, Jung Hui and Young Hui, live six blocks from the funeral site. His closest friends were Korean and, according to his mother, he felt a strong sense of duty toward his community.

“Look at this turnout,” said Chris Chang, 33, who had come in from the San Fernando Valley from the funeral even though he had never known Lee. “Among Koreans, there is deep anger over his death. We trusted the police and we were abandoned.”

This report was written by Times staff writer Janny Scott. Staff writer John H. Lee contributed.