Silence Finally Broken in ’84 Slaying of Youth

It has been nearly 11 years since he died in the cross-fire of a gang war, and the dogeared clippings seem almost mundane: Earnest Pickett Jr., honor student and athlete, had been shot in full view of 300 classmates. And although everyone knew his killer, none dared tell.

Oh, two homeboys were arrested. But after a while, they were let go. Insufficient evidence, the judge said. No witnesses would talk. And as time passed, the case went the way of so many Los Angeles gang murders--to the unsolved homicide desk at the Los Angeles Police Department.

But on Wednesday, police announced a new twist in the old case. After more than a decade of silence--a decade in which Pickett’s classmates had grown up to have children of their own, in which his memory and promise had haunted them--people had decided to it was time to speak. And a suspect, after all this time, was being sought.

In a news conference at the LAPD’s South Bureau, homicide Lt. Sergio Robleto said police are seeking Edwin (Ed Dog) Smith, 28, of Los Angeles, who was one of the two teen-age gang members originally arrested in the Jan. 20, 1984, incident.

Smith, described by police as “armed and dangerous,” was freed after the 1984 arrest, continued to run afoul of police, detectives said, racking up a number of arrests in the years that followed. In fact, said Robleto, police believe that Smith killed another man as recently as Oct. 6, 1993, and a warrant has been circulating for his arrest in that matter for the past year. The victim in that case was Ronald Dean Miller, an ex-convict who had been counseling children in Smith’s neighborhood to stay away from gangs and drugs, Robleto said.

Detective Carolyn Flamenco, whose legwork implicated Smith in the 1984 case, said police are hoping that, with the holidays coming up, residents will help locate Smith, who has been a fugitive for the past year.

Meanwhile, Pickett’s mother, Lee Bertha Pickett-Allen, said the developments in her son’s murder case have galvanized her hope “that Ernie won’t end up being just another black kid killed by another black kid.”

The gunfire that erupted at 2:12 p.m. on a busy street corner across from Dorsey High School claimed two lives--that of Ronald Gregorie, a 25-year-old suspected gang member, and that of 17-year-old Pickett, who played second base on the Dorsey baseball team and was on his way home to retrieve his gear when he was shot in the back.

The incident stunned the student body at Dorsey, where Pickett was a beloved and popular classmate. But despite the presence of hundreds of witnesses, police could get nobody to testify. Many said later that they were threatened with violence.

So the case languished until two years ago when Pickett’s mother came to Flamenco, who started over from scratch. With the aid of computers and the school yearbook, she said, she tracked down the witnesses, “who told me, ‘This has bothered me for the past 10 years.’ ”

“There were tears, quivering--they were scared to death,” Flamenco said. “But it was like a relief for some of them. I don’t know how I convinced them, but they wanted to do the right thing. I think this closes a chapter in their lives.”