Preacher Near Death From Attack in Riots

Watching images of looting on television during the second night of the Los Angeles riots, Pasadena evangelist Wallace Tope was moved to show the lawbreakers the error of their ways.

After several friends refused to accompany him, Tope, 52, went alone to a shopping mall at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, where hundreds of people had gathered as looters ransacked a Sav-On drugstore. There, he began to preach, urging the agitated crowd to stop the plundering and place their faith in Jesus.

The evangelist, who is not affiliated with any church, may have paid for his religious conviction with his life. As he was preaching, two men began to beat him. When he tried to flee, he fell to the ground, and the men kicked him repeatedly in the head for nearly three minutes, witnesses said.

Tope was eventually rescued by the crew of a passing ambulance, but shortly after arriving at a nearby Kaiser Permanente hospital, he lapsed into a coma. Police said that, while Tope lay in the ambulance, he mumbled, “Believe in Jesus. Believe in Jesus.”

Authorities say Tope is not expected to live, and they have asked for public help to identify his assailants.

“He went up and confronted crowds of hundreds of people--spectators and looters--and started denouncing what they were doing and telling them how it was morally wrong,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Dennis Kilcoyne. “His religious beliefs were so strong, he believed that was his mission in life.”

Kilcoyne described Tope’s attackers as a Latino man about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, wearing a white, short-sleeve, button-down shirt, oversized Levis and a gray baseball cap; and a stocky black man, also 5 feet, 6 inches, wearing brown pants and a white shirt with red sleeves. Both appeared to be in their mid-20s.

Tope’s family and friends are devastated but said they are not surprised that Tope--who had dedicated his adult life to preaching--would confront an angry mob alone.

“He always wanted to be witnessing to people who were godless,” said his younger brother, Dennis, an assistant principal at Mojave High School in Kern County. “You would have a hard time stopping him from going down there. He wanted to turn these people around.”

Concerned about the potential for trouble, Tope’s mother called her eldest son the night the rioting began, urging him to stay inside. But he made no promises.

“I think that most of the people realized it was too dangerous to go, but Wally threw caution to the wind,” Dennis Tope said.

“He shouldn’t have gone out there,” he continued, crying. “But he wouldn’t listen. Those people weren’t going to listen to him; they just wanted to pillage and loot.”

Theresa White, a neighbor, was watching the riots on television with Tope when the preacher announced his intention.

“There was an effort to stop him,” she said, but Tope was too determined. “To many people, it looks like a very foolish thing that he did. But he has a heart after God, and he doesn’t always use the judgment that other people would use.”

Tope is the oldest of three children raised in a Glendale home that his brother described as not being particularly religious. But while studying electronic engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Tope became a born-again Christian.

After graduating in 1964, Tope worked for a Pasadena microwave research center, then a Hawthorne engineering firm, his brother said.

But those jobs “didn’t satisfy his desire to work for Christ,” Dennis Tope said. So in 1967, his brother quit his job and started attending courses at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Since then, he has preached and written Christian literature, including articles questioning the theological underpinnings of some Christian groups.

Tope traveled around Europe and Asia speaking about his faith, and he was once jailed for trespassing when he went to Brigham Young University in Utah, which is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and told students that Mormons were “preaching a false doctrine,” his brother recalled.

Tope, who is single, has lived mainly off donations and the income from his writing. Friends said he has been leading a Spartan existence, living in a studio apartment and driving an old, secondhand car.

Dennis Tope said he repeatedly asked his brother to avoid confrontations, but the preacher’s response was always the same: “God will protect me.”