Changing Neighborhood Claims Longtime Resident : Violence: Emery Hughes, who ignored his family’s pleas to move, apparently was slain in a fight with a burglar in the South-Central home in which he had lived for 40 years.

For years, 82-year-old Emery Hughes’ family told him he should move out of the increasingly dangerous Florence neighborhood of South-Central Los Angeles where he had lived for 40 years. On Sunday night, their worst fears were realized when Hughes was stabbed to death during an apparent burglary.

Under gray clouds and light rain, Hughes’ children gathered Tuesday morning in the front yard of his Miramonte Boulevard home to begin setting his now-empty house in order. In remembering their father, they recalled his determination to stay in the house where he had raised them.

Three months ago, daughter Zeralda Hughes, who had been living with her father in the family home, moved to the Westside, leaving him alone. She and her siblings, who had also moved to different areas of Los Angeles, were worried about his safety.

“This was a very quiet neighborhood when we moved here 40 years ago,” Zeralda Hughes said. “But now it’s changed. People had broken into his toolshed before and taken (his) lawn mower. We were afraid because he lived here in this neighborhood and he was by himself. But he’s very independent.”

“He wanted to be near his friends and the things that he knew,” daughter Jennie Thomas said. “He went to the track nearly every day. He played dominoes in the park and over at his friends’ house.”

Hughes was killed Sunday by a man police described as a burglar who entered through a window after slashing a screen.

Thomas said she believed her father died while fighting with the killer. She said he was the kind of man who would have tried to stop the burglar.

“He was a hod carrier. He used to carry concrete,” she said. “And he was still going strong, but he lost this fight.”

Friends of the slain man found him about 9:15 p.m. Sunday, Deputy Benita Hinojos said. Hughes died three hours later at County-USC Medical Center.

Relatives believe that the killer may have stolen the money from Hughes’ latest Social Security check because they could not find the check or the money in the home.

“The elderly are easy targets for burglaries,” Detective Mike Crowley said. “But (Hughes’ murder) is really senseless.”

Zeralda Hughes said her father was a vibrant man who still “looked like he was around 60 years old. He was strong for his age. . . . He had a girlfriend in Altadena who he saw three times a week.”