COVER STORY : Lifetime Sentences : Families of Victims Haunted by Pain, Grief Confront Young Offenders in an Effort to Stem the Violence

Sharon Peterson stood behind the podium, tears hidden behind her sunglasses. Dozensof murderers, robbers and other criminals filled the audience.

Peterson had come to speak about the death of her daughter, Renee, a 26-year-old mother of four who was gunned down last year, allegedly by gang members.

“Don’t go around killing innocent people because you don’t know how much it hurts the family,” Peterson said. “No one knows the pain unless you’ve been there.”

Peterson offered her emotional remarks during the annual Victim’s Week program at Fred C. Nelles School, a state Youth Authority facility in Whittier. She was one of several people who came to Nelles to confront young criminals with chilling stories of lost children and ravaged lives.

Among the speakers was a mother who recounted the last minutes of her son’s life in a hospital bed. A father whose son was slain during a robbery attempt spoke of his struggle to overcome anger. “You created an enemy,” he told a group of offenders.

Former gangbangers also showed up in wheelchairs and told how they once thought they were invincible, swaggering through their neighborhoods until gunfire shattered their spines.

“I suffer every day in this wheelchair,” said Carlos Luna, 18. “I miss everything I did before. There’s no way you can get used to this.”

Some of the offenders seemed uninterested in the week’s events, greeting the speakers with yawns. Nelles houses the most hard-core youth offenders, those who have committed felonies such as murder, assault and rape. Some remain until they are 25, the age limit in the Youth Authority system.

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But Nelles officials hoped the encounters would open at least some of these young criminals’ eyes to the pain they have inflicted on others.

“It’s real easy to do time if you don’t have to think about the crime,” said Shelly Wood, one of the event’s organizers. “If they see a mother cry and babies cry, maybe they’ll think about it. Maybe they’ll have a better understanding of what they did.”

Nelles officials arrange for victims to visit throughout the year, but said the Victim’s Week program is an intensive experience designed to show offenders that their crimes hurt people.

Nelles officials have been arranging victims programs for more than a decade. For each of the last five years, they have raised money for families that have been victimized by crime. This year, Nelles’ staff and wards raised about $4,500 for Sharon Peterson’s family. The offenders contributed money they got from home or earned in minimum-wage jobs near the facility.

During a luncheon on the final day of the week, Peterson was accompanied by her daughter’s children. Every day, she said, the youngsters struggle with their mother’s loss.

Renee’s daughter, 6-year-old Dominique, is afraid to go to the bathroom alone at night. Damon, 10, refuses to live at Peterson’s home in Hawthorne, staying with another relative miles away in an effort to avoid any reminder of the ordeal.

“When I look at the children, that’s what hurts the most,” Sharon Peterson said.

Renee Peterson-Walker was killed last November in South-Central Los Angeles as she returned home from visiting her mother at work.

Police do not know who killed her or why. The city of Los Angeles has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the assailants, but police have no solid leads. Police believe that gang members may have mistaken the car in which Peterson and a friend were riding for one belonging to members of a rival gang.

Police said a carload of men pulled alongside the car. A chase ensued and the men opened fire. The women’s car crashed into a house near West 81st Street and Mariposa Avenue. The gang members approached and continued shooting, striking Peterson several times but missing her friend.

“What bothers me more than anything is, ‘Why?’ ” Sharon Peterson asked. “What was the reason behind it?”

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For Peterson and the other speakers at Nelles, Victim’s Week offered a rare opportunity to vent frustrations face to face with youthful offenders and to convey the message that violent crime leaves its mark among the living.

“I’m the one who got the life sentence, not the guy who murdered my son,” said Teresa Wheel, whose 19-year-old son, Kevin, was gunned down in an apparently random drive-by attack in Hawaiian Gardens four years ago.

In the aftermath of the incident, Wheel launched her own investigation and learned through anonymous tips that three Artesia gang members had allegedly committed the crime. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide investigators, while calling Wheel’s information useful, said they can’t move forward without witnesses who are willing to testify.

Wheel has refused to give up. Occasionally, she goes to 183rd Street and Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia, a few blocks from where she believes the killers live, and stands for several hours with a cardboard sign that reads: “$10,000 reward--please help me convict the murderers of my son, Kevin.”

Wheel brought the sign when she spoke to a group of offenders at Nelles. One held up the sign as Wheel recounted the last minutes of her son’s life--how she kissed his eyes and his cheeks as he lay in the hospital with a bullet lodged in his brain.

“I put his arm around me and laid on his chest and cried,” Wheel said as young men in the room paged through a photo album she had brought. “How do you say goodby to your son? It’s the hardest thing in the world.”

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Robert Dunn, whose 24-year-old son was killed three years ago by gang members during an armed robbery attempt in Hawthorne, said he felt both anger and compassion for the offenders he was addressing.

“I can’t understand how you can pull a trigger and take somebody’s life for no reason,” he said. “If you love yourself why do you put yourself in prison? Would you do it to your dog? Your Mom? There are no circumstances that cause you to be here but you.”

Dunn also dismissed the idea that violence is a symbol of manhood.

“ Tough isn’t shooting somebody,” he said. “It takes nothing to pull a trigger.”

But Dunn, a member of the Pasadena chapter of the group Parents of Murdered Children, put his harsh feelings aside and offered to serve as a mentor for those who are serious about turning their lives around.

He encouraged the offenders to make plans for getting jobs or education once they leave, and he told them to take advantage of high school classes at Nelles.

“This is a waste for you,” he said of their lives. “You’re vegetating.”

Whether Dunn and the other speakers had any impact on the offenders remains a question. During the presentations, many of the wards seemed uninterested--dozing off, combing their hair or passing bags of chips. One speaker became infuriated at a group of offenders who chose to play basketball rather than come inside for the session. She refused to begin until the entire group assembled in front of her.

“You young people don’t give a damn about nobody,” Patricia Patrick, head of the Lakewood-based Mothers Against Gangs In Communities, told the offenders. “Do you ever stop to think about what you’ve done?”

Some of the wards appeared defensive. One said that peer pressure makes it impossible to show their feelings. “Y’all don’t understand,” he said.

Others said they didn’t want to remember their pasts.

“I don’t like hearing or talking about stuff like this,” one 16-year-old ward told Wheel after she spoke. “It’s uncomfortable. I’d rather not deal with it.”

Nelles counselors said they were not surprised at the lack of interest. Many of the offenders, they say, will never give up their gangbanging ways. But for those looking to change, the counselors said, the victim’s program offered an opportunity for self-reflection.

A few offenders seemed genuinely moved by the speakers.

After Dunn spoke, a small group of young men approached him to talk further. “You made me think about how precious life is,” one said quietly.

Another asked if he could talk to Dunn privately. “You made me think about a lot of things,” he said. “Your son’s death can help change me.”

A handful of offenders who approached Wheel after her talk had even stronger reactions.

A 22-year-old offender who is locked up for murder offered words of remorse. “I realize how much pain I caused,” he said. “I know my victim’s mom is going through the same thing. If there is anything I can do to make a difference for you. . .”

Wheel replied softly: “Be sincere.”

The group of former gang members now in wheelchairs offered far more stern advice: quit gangbanging and criminal activity, or end up paralyzed or dead.

Their paralyzed arms and legs, they said, are proof that gangbanging leads only to tragedy. “This is a wake-up call,” said George Modica, 27, a paraplegic and counselor with Teens on Target, a violence prevention program at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey.

Modica spent four years at Nelles and five years in prison for assault, robbery and other crimes, but said he never learned from his mistakes until it was too late.

Five years ago, he was shot by young gang members in Los Angeles. The assailants never gave a reason but Modica, who was a veteran gang member, thinks the teen-agers may have been looking to make a name for themselves.

“I hope one of you will remember these words,” he said. “I’m hoping you won’t go out and pick up a gun.”

Carlos Luna said he, too, wishes he would have listened to the warnings from elders who knew how vicious the streets can be.

“I said, ‘That’ll never happen to me, man,’ ” said Luna, 18, who was left paralyzed from the neck down after a bullet pierced his spine about two years ago during a drive-by shooting. The incident also injured Luna’s larynx and has left him with a low, gravel-toned voice. Luna will never be able to have children. He can’t even urinate on his own. Instead, he uses a catheter and a plastic bag.

“It took me getting shot and ending up in a wheelchair to change,” he said. “Don’t let it get to this point. Maybe next time it’ll be you giving the speeches.”