Shooting of Young Athlete Ends a Life Full of Promise : Slaying: Colleges around U.S. had eyes on Banning star. He was killed by unknown gunmen.

Dupree Tave died because of a flat tire and a gunman he never knew.

He died because he decided to stay with a friend. He died because the streets of Inglewood caught up with him just as everything was going his way.

He had planned his life out so carefully. He had stayed clean. He had kept his grades up. The gangs in his Carson neighborhood had never gotten to him.

For Tave, football was to have been his way into college and beyond. He had been good, very good, with still a season to go at Banning High School in Wilmington. USC and UCLA had been keeping tabs on him. So had schools as far away as Kansas.

But then came the flat tire as he was cruising Crenshaw Boulevard with friends in the opening hour of Monday morning. A few minutes later, he was dead.

Cruising Crenshaw is what a lot of young people do, and Sunday is the busiest time. They drive from the southern border of Inglewood north to Baldwin Hills and then back again. It was extra busy Sunday because most students were off on Easter break. Tave was driving the boulevard with three friends, looking for people they knew, looking for girls, looking for a good time.

They were riding in a red Ford Thunderbird, as they had been much of the evening. They were talking of going home when they spotted a car with teen-age girls in it. They gave chase, one last little adventure of the evening. The Thunderbird was going too fast when it hit a dip in the road, and a tire popped.

Mike Zieggler, a former high school classmate of Tave, was driving the car. He said he didn’t have the right tools to fix the flat and had to go home to get them. Passenger Charles Hicks went with him. Devin Bradley, 18, offered to stay and watch the car, which was parked at 85th Street and Crenshaw. Tave said he would keep him company.

Sgt. Bill Thompson of the Inglewood police homicide squad said the two teen-agers were sitting in the car when a blue Dodge van passed them slowly, going in the opposite direction. The headlights of the van lit up the interior of the car. Then the van made a U-turn and pulled abreast of the Thunderbird, and a gunman opened fire. Tave was shot several times in the head. The bullets narrowly missed Bradley.

“There is no indication at all that there was an exchange between them,” Thompson said. “There was absolutely no confrontation that we are aware of.” And, he said, no one knew who was in the blue van, which crashed while making its getaway. Those in it escaped on foot.

When Zieggler returned half an hour later, he found the Thunderbird, its windows blown out, surrounded by ambulances and police cars. Tave had been pronounced dead at the scene.

At 3:30 a.m. Monday, Banning football coach Michael Allen’s phone rang. On the other end was a distraught Lula Tave, calling after learning of her son’s death. Allen was one of the natural people to call. He had taken a great interest in Tave, whose father died 11 years ago.

Saturday morning, he had taken Tave and another student to USC so they could watch a spring scrimmage. Later that afternoon, Allen had taken a group of students, including Tave, to the Arcadia Invitational track meet. Tave, also a sprinter on the track team, wanted to see how he stacked up against the best in the state.

Allen described Tave as someone who would always call to see how his friends were doing but who would compete fiercely even if he wasn’t the best player on the field or runner on the track.

“I’m not saying he was perfect,” the coach said. “But he was the type of young man who cared about others. . . .” Allen’s voice dropped off. “Even me.”

Banning Principal Obelia Lamothe was at her desk Tuesday afternoon, catching up on some work even though it was a vacation week. She had known Tave as a good athlete and average student who never got into any trouble to speak of. Lamothe said she had called Tave’s mother Monday to express her sympathy.

“All over the city, it just seems like the good guys are out there getting hurt,” she said. “Here is a young man who is focused and trying to accomplish things on the athletic field and in the classroom. It’s just such a waste.”

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Tave was only 6 months old when his parents moved to the pink stucco house in Carson. The couches were covered with plastic to keep them clean. The house, filled with mourners Tuesday afternoon, was perfectly kept.

Lula Tave, her face awash in sadness, sat at the dining room table picking at a plate of food that had been put in front of her. For two days, mourners and well-wishers had knocked at the door, telling her how much they had liked her son and how much they would miss him. Two former girlfriends, once rivals, came to the house together. Allen had been there Monday and planned to come back Tuesday.

“I didn’t know my child was so loved and so well-known,” Lula Tave said. “I didn’t know how many lives he touched.”

She said Bradley’s mother had called her with the news that her son had been shot.

“I rushed to the scene,” she said. “I don’t even think I had shoes on. My baby was a hero. He stayed with his friend so he wouldn’t be alone.”

She talked on, almost as if she were in a trance. She talked of how her son had worked hard to keep up his grades, knowing an athletic scholarship depended on it, of how he had needed special tutoring in grade school but never wanted to let anyone learn he had needed it.

She pulled out the folder of letters from college recruiters and other paperwork. There was a 10th-grade report card with a mixed bag of grades, but all “excellents” for citizenship. She talked on about her baby, of how he had always stayed clear of gangs and guns.

“If it wasn’t for the flat, he would have been home,” she said.