Man Charged With Murder in Homeless Woman’s Death

A Pacoima man was arraigned Monday on murder and other charges connected with the drive-by shooting of a popular homeless woman who was gunned down in front of her friends last month, authorities said.

Guillermo Cervantes Jr., 26, was arrested Thursday at a friend’s residence in Pacoima after police served a search warrant, said Detective Mike Oppelt of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division.

Cervantes is charged with one count each of murder, negligent discharge of a firearm and assault with a deadly weapon. He is being held on $1-million bail at the Los Angeles County Central Jail.

Homicide investigators linked Cervantes with the Oct. 12 shooting death of Olivia Little Divers, 49, primarily through witness interviews and shell casings at the scene, Oppelt said.

Shortly after Divers was killed in the 11500 block of Bradley Avenue about 7:15 p.m., shots were fired in the 11000 block of Herrick Avenue from a burgundy or red compact car that matched the description of the vehicle that carried two or three men involved in Divers’ death, Oppelt said.

Police are conducting further ballistics tests on the shell casings found at both sites, Oppelt said.

Cervantes may not have had a target in mind when he fired the shots that killed Divers, authorities said, but the precise motive is not known.

Divers was killed with an AK-47 assault rifle, but the weapon was never found, said Joe Civitate, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who filed charges against Cervantes. No trial date has been set in the case, he added.

Divers’ death stirred frustration among her friends, some of whom held a memorial march eight days after her death to call for an end to street violence. More than 100 mourners gathered at Divers’ favorite neighborhood spot, a wall decorated with fading flowers, to protest the type of senseless killing that her death symbolized.

The Rev. Dudley Chatman, who organized the march, expressed relief that a suspect had been arrested in Divers’ case.

“That’s good news, that’s great news, but it’s little consolation to know he was aiming at someone else,” he said. Chatman, a pastor at the Greater Community Missionary Baptist Church on Norris Avenue, just two blocks from the slaying scene, said the shots that killed Divers halted his Bible class.

The homeless woman was a popular figure in the neighborhood. She regularly parked her shopping cart next to the alley, and cleaned the area as if it were her home. She swept the sidewalk every day and placed boxes on both sides of the street to collect trash, residents said.

Children and teen-agers accepted Divers as a friend and showed her respect. Known gang members also befriended the woman, sometimes giving her money or buying her food or beer, friends said.