Man Killed at Funeral for Boy Who Died in Custody : Violence: Police said they did not expect trouble at service for 16-year-old who was allegedly a victim of chokehold. They are unsure if the second death was gang-related.

The funeral of one young man led to the death of another Monday when a mourner was shot to death as he left memorial services for Anthony Dion Bowie, who had died in juvenile hall of an alleged chokehold used by a staff member.

Friends of Bowie, 16, had begun filing out of the New Life Baptist Church, and family members were still mourning at his open casket at 3 p.m. when shots rang out on the street. Screaming people ran back into the church and hit the floor behind the organ and pews stocked with hymnals and tambourines.

“The blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus,” cried one woman as she clung to others behind the organ.

About 30 feet from the front door of the church at 109th Street and Broadway, 22-year-old Vernon Lincoln lay on his back in a pool of blood, his blue baseball cap fallen beside him. A distraught woman cried out, “That’s my son-in-law. (My daughter) just had a baby.”

Downey police officers investigating Bowie’s Dec. 15 death said at the time that Bowie was a member of a Crips faction from the Lynwood area. Last week, police theorized that the scuffle that led to his death began when juvenile hall staffers tried to break up a gang-related shouting match between one group of youths at the facility and Bowie and a fellow Crip.

But Los Angeles police who responded to the shooting at the funeral said they had not suspected that Bowie’s funeral might turn violent.

Although the Los Angeles Police Department has no official policy on the matter, it is standard practice for it to deploy one or more cars to patrol near the service and at the cemetery at gang funerals, to act as a deterrent to retaliatory crimes.

One LAPD officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said gang details had received street intelligence that there might be a shooting at the funeral, but that the Southeast Division had chosen to ignore it. As it turned out, the officer said, only two unmarked cars were on the scene, although the police occupying them were in uniform.

However, Capt. Bruce Hagerty of the Southeast Division disputed the claim that the department could have done more to prevent the shooting. Hagerty and the on-duty watch commander, Sgt. Gary Bean, said no word had been left by the department’s gang detail or anyone else that extra police protection might be necessary at the funeral.

“As far as we knew, the only reason this was a high profile funeral was because of that incident at juvenile hall,” Hagerty said. “We didn’t know this guy was even a gang member.”

Hagerty said it was unclear whether the slaying at the funeral was gang-related. Witnesses said one group of about five young men leaving the funeral was walking south on Broadway when they encountered another group coming from the opposite direction. Words were exchanged when they were about five feet apart, and about eight to 10 shots were fired, according to one television cameraman who witnessed the gunfire. Lincoln was pronounced dead at the scene.

A number of news reporters were present at the funeral, and at least part of the encounter was captured on videotape.

Police said several suspects fled in a car. About eight other people were taken into custody, but it was unclear whether they would be suspects or witnesses.

More than 100 people, including young friends of Bowie’s wearing blue bandannas, had gathered to remember him. He “loved his God, his family, his homies, and all mankind. . . . We love you Dion,” mourner Barbara Jackson said at the service.

“He was born July 17, 1976, in Los Angeles, California, to Sonya Marie Bowie and Charles Smith. He was an energetic little boy. He was always trying to be the best at everything he did. From the time he was 2 years old, he attracted love and people’s attention for being so strong-willed. From the time he was a little boy, he considered himself his family’s protector,” she said from the pulpit.

He was survived by his mother and five brothers and sisters.

Bowie apparently had been arrested by Los Angeles police for “some type of assault” and was brought to Los Padrinos in Downey in October, Downey Police Lt. Michael Wheatley said.

The Los Angeles Probation Department does not release arrest records of juveniles. The Downey department is awaiting final autopsy results before passing on its findings to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Wheatley said.

At Bowie’s funeral, a chorus of women sang gospel songs, and two preachers gave sermons on finding salvation in Jesus Christ. Neither sermon mentioned how Bowie had died or lived.

“I didn’t even know the kid,” said the Rev. Wayne Banks, after the commotion from the shooting had died down. “They asked to use the church and asked me to preach.”

He said he didn’t know that Bowie had died in juvenile hall.

After the sermons, Bowie’s friends filed past the body, which lay in an open silver-colored casket decorated with white and blue flowers. Many young men kissed his face. Outside the church, before the shooting, a man who appeared to be in his early 30s and called himself J.C. said he had known Bowie since the boy was 10 or 11.

“He was always funny, a joke-able type. He was a good little boy--lively, real lively.”

Traffic was stopped in both directions on Broadway for several hours after the 3 p.m. shooting, when police cordoned off the area.

“It really hurts me to see this kind of thing,” said the Rev. Carl Washington, deputy to County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who fled into the church and fell to the floor when he heard gunshots.

“You come to a funeral, and then it’s your funeral. It’s hard to see. . . . It’s outrageous,” said Washington, who has worked on gang truce mediations.

Meanwhile, John Caldwell, a lawyer, said later that he is preparing a lawsuit on behalf of Bowie’s family.

“There are so many young black kids that get shot and die out here and it gets forgotten,” Caldwell said. He said he does not want Bowie’s death in juvenile hall to be “swept under the rug.”