Veteran of Gangs’ War and Peace Dies by Gunfire : Violence: Tony Thomas is killed by suspected drug dealers. He may have been trying to counsel them.

Tony Thomas’ conversion from gangbanger to peacemaker ended Thursday when he was killed by suspected drug dealers whom he apparently had been trying to counsel.

His journey had never been an easy one.

Thomas was a 30-year-old veteran of the PJ Watts Crips His mother died while he was locked away in County Jail. After his release, rivals shot him eight times with an AK-47, a nearly fatal attack that left him with a limp and several bullets still lodged in his body.

Even after he helped forge the highly publicized truce on the eve of the 1992 riots--emerging as one of South-Central Los Angeles’ most celebrated peacemakers--Thomas continued to walk a fine line. He co-founded the nonprofit Hands Across Watts corporation and Oprah Winfrey invited him on her talk show. But on the streets he was challenging a violent culture that had been decades in the making. Friends said he rarely left the house without a bulletproof vest.

“When you stand up against your homeboys, like Tony did, you face that danger,” said T. Rodgers, a former Bloods leader who runs a consulting firm known as Sidewalk University. “Once you make that change in your life, you no longer believe in what they believe in. Your thinking has changed. And that’s what’s scary to them.”

Details of Thomas’ slaying remained sketchy Friday, despite two news conferences--one a curt appearance by Los Angeles Police Department officials, the other an emotional farewell attended by ex-gang leaders, rapper Ice-T and the Nation of Islam’s top West Coast representative.

Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, commander of the LAPD’s South Bureau, said only that Thomas was involved in a confrontation at the Imperial Courts housing project Thursday night that “erupted in gunfire that took his life.” He described the shooting as an “act of gang violence,” but added that detectives did not know whether Thomas was targeted or if drugs were involved. No arrests had been made.

Lt. Sergio Robleto, commander of the bureau’s homicide detail, said the gun battle also resulted in injuries to Andre Wicker, 22, who was in critical condition Friday with multiple gunshots, and Rodney Compton, 20, who was treated and released.

“There were dozens of rounds shot that night,” Robleto said, adding that Thomas was hit “multiple times throughout his body--from head to toe.”

In a teary gathering at the Kendren Community Center in Watts, friends said that Thomas, widely known as Tony Bogard, had gone to the housing project to play dice in hopes of earning enough money to pay a phone bill at the nearby Hands Across Watts office. As he did almost every day, they said, he also sought out a few of the younger members of his former gang, urging them to lay down their weapons and do something positive for the community.

Although police could not confirm this account, Thomas reportedly lectured several suspected drug dealers who apparently did not want his advice.

“Brother Tony did not approve of drug dealers,” said Malik Spellman, 30, who worked closely with Thomas at Hands Across Watts. “He took a stand.”

The Rev. Carl Washington, a truce negotiator who serves as a deputy to County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, said he could not understand why “such a little, minute situation” had cost Thomas his life. “The only thing we can tell you today is that our brother paid the price,” Washington said. “He died for a just cause.”

In a separate interview, Becky Hammonds, Thomas’ girlfriend of 14 years, said she believed he was “ambushed by some PJ Watts Crips who wasn’t keen on the peace.” She added that witnesses told her that Thomas was carrying a pistol and that he fired back at his assailants, possibly wounding two of them.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “All the wrong we done, then we start doing right, and this happens.”

By Friday afternoon, the bullet shells and the blood stains had been washed away from the spot on the 2200 block of East 114th Street where Thomas had lain dying less than 24 hours before. There was no memorial, no sign of mourners.

“I’ve never seen it this quiet,” said Cynthia Mendenhall, president of the Imperial Courts residents council. “Nobody is talking about what they think happened or who they think did it.”

The killing signaled a troubling turn for the truce movement and Hands Across Watts, whose other co-founder, Tyrone (Ty-Stick) Baker, has been held on weapons charges for the past several months by federal authorities in Kansas City.

The organization had planned to hold a peace treaty picnic todayat Imperial Courts in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and had recently received a $200,000 job training grant that Thomas was helping to implement at the housing project, said Patrick Mulligan, former executive director of Hands Across Watts and a consultant for the corporation.

“In some respects, the truce has been decapitated,” he said.

Ice-T, who serves on the organization’s board of directors, also expressed concern about the loss of Thomas’ nonviolent message. “He was like a real diplomat in the ‘hood,” the rapper said. “Ice-T might say, ‘Stop,’ but Ice-T makes records. When these brothers, like Tony, said, ‘Stop,’ that means something.”

Despite those concerns, truce leaders and other community activists made a point Friday of emphasizing that Thomas had not died in vain. Others would rise to the occasion, they said, picking up where he left off. “Tony gave his life for what he believed in,” ex-gang leader Rodgers said. “There will be 10 that will take his place.”

Thomas had been working with writer Barbara Cottman Becnel, who is featuring him as a central character in a book she is writing about the history of the Bloods and Crips to be published this fall by Macmillan Books. She said Friday that his death brought home just how difficult the transition was that Thomas had been making in his life.

“When you and I decide that there’s some little glitch in our psyche that we want to work on, it’s usually a little, minor, internal project,” she said. “Tony was making the kind of change that few of us ever demand of ourselves. He was this man of the streets, working with everything he had in him, with all of his heart, to claim a solid place in the legitimate world. It was very, very hard.”

She attributed his reformation as a hardened gangster who spent nearly nine years behind bars to two pivotal events that he frequently spoke of--the death of his mother and his brush with death.

“He really loved his mother,” Becnel said. “He didn’t want to keep living the kind of life that, when his mother was dying, he couldn’t be there. That really hurt him.”

Later, when Thomas was riddled with semiautomatic gunfire in front of his house on Jan. 17, 1991, there was little hope he would survive. Becnel said he had “a sort of death-bed epiphany.”

“He made some real decisions about the rest of his life,” she said. “His deal with God was that, ‘If I survive this situation, I’m going to do good.’ ”

But after the truce, he again was struck by tragedy. Last February, his sister was killed by a bullet that ripped through her apartment window while she cooked in her kitchen at Imperial Courts.