Pasadena Offers Reward in Slaying of 3 Youths

With police desperate for leads in the Halloween night ambush killing of three schoolchildren, the Pasadena City Council--with unexpected difficulty--voted Tuesday to create a $25,000 reward fund.

The city’s ruling body had to make an end run around controversial Councilman Isaac Richard, a longtime critic of Pasadena’s politics, who opposed the fund. Council members waited for him to leave the chambers, then quickly approved the reward fund on a 4-0 vote.

Earlier, the council had been stymied by Richard, who had used a legal technicality to stall passage of the reward measure, berating the council for ignoring crime and economic problems in his district in northwest Pasadena.

City officials said the reward fund will be permanent so it can generate tips not only for the Halloween night slayings but for previous unsolved cases and future ones. There will be a tip line, guarantees of anonymity and cash payments, Pasadena Police Chief Jerry Oliver said.

A few Pasadena residents had already contributed money toward the fund, he said. Earlier Tuesday, a Los Angeles group called the Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation announced its own $10,000 reward in the killings.

Detectives hope the funds will pry loose basic information in the Halloween night crime. Police have no detailed descriptions of the gunmen or the getaway cars they used after fatally shooting Stephen Coats Jr. and Reggie Crawford, both 14, and Edgar Evans, 13.

The boys were among a group of 10 who were walking home from a combination Halloween and birthday party at 10:30 p.m. Sunday when at least two gunmen jumped out of bushes in front of a house on North Wilson Avenue and sprayed them with semiautomatic gunfire.

Three other boys suffered minor wounds.

Because witnesses said the gunmen yelled, “Now, blood!” before opening fire, some in the central Pasadena neighborhood speculated that the killings were a gang initiation.

But Pasadena Detective Sgt. Timothy Sweetman said the killings probably were not part of a gang ritual. Gang members usually initiate new members simply by having them hang out with the gang veterans--or by beating them, Sweetman said.

If violence against others is part of an initiation or other gang activity, it usually occurs in a drive-by or walk-up shooting, the detective said.

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“That’s what makes this rare,” Sweetman said. “It was rather sophisticated. It was an ambush.”

Also unusual was the caravan of four cars that reportedly passed the 10 youths as they were walking home. Passengers inside the cars gave the boys a “hard stare” some time before the shooting, Sweetman said.

Meanwhile, Pasadena school officials sent counselors to five high schools and middle schools Tuesday as students returned after Monday’s school holiday.

Among those counseled were students at Elliott Middle School, which only last week served as an evacuation center for those uprooted by wildfires.

For students exposed then to weeping and panicked adults, school nurse Karin Robinson-Smith noted, this week’s shootings were a “double whammy.”

“We’re getting a lot of headaches and stomachaches in the office that are turning out to be grieving,” Robinson-Smith said.

The shootings also outraged adults in Pasadena, some of whom said the level of violence has become intolerable.

“Enough is enough,” said Karen Hooks-Roon, a community worker with the American Friends Service Committee. “Our children are being ambushed, literally ambushed.”

Hooks-Roon, a former northwest Pasadena resident and mother of three, said her son learned at the age of 4 to duck inside his home at the sound of gunfire at night.

“You don’t know if they’ll come back at night,” she said. “You’ve got to have them home by the time the street lights go on.”

In an effort to rally local families against the violence, a “Stop the Killing” candlelight vigil was scheduled for 6:30 tonight at Wilson Avenue and Emerson Street, Hooks-Roon said.

In addition, the Friends Committee and the Pasadena branch of the Los Angeles Urban League have started a memorial fund to cover funeral expenses for the families of the slain boys. The City Council also declared Sunday as a day of mourning in Pasadena.

The reward fund had been expected to pass routinely--until Richard used the midday council session to accuse his colleagues of “simple grandstanding.”

“This is pandering to the press,” said Richard, who has clashed repeatedly with his colleagues and been censured for his conduct.

He complained, “This council sat idly by when four people were gunned down in close to a score of gang-related shootings in this city and no reward fund was created.”

A two-thirds vote of the entire council was needed to place the reward on the agenda. But because two of seven council members were absent, Richard’s no vote left the council powerless to consider the measure. When he left the chambers for a moment, however, the council had only four members--triggering a rule allowing a simple majority vote.

The reward was then quickly approved.

Lt. Denis Petersen said he expects the $25,000 reward to help break free leads in the triple slayings and other crimes.

“I can remember the ATM homicide, we got a trickling of calls,” Petersen said, referring to an Aug. 27 slaying. “But when First Interstate Bank offered a $50,000 reward, we were inundated with calls. So money does speak.”