To a Mother, the Enemy Is Violence

Madeline McDonald had written me a letter, one that had obviously come from the heart, one that chronicled the crimes that had touched her family and her neighborhood.

“There’s no getting away from it,” she told me over the phone.

What, I wondered, is it ?

“The everyday worry of kids being out there!”

Her tone was one of exasperation. “A lady was held up at gunpoint at the Pavilions near my home,” she continued. “. . . I’m scared for my kids to go to that movie theater.”

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That movie theater is the cineplex at the Fallbrook Mall in the west San Fernando Valley, a five-minute drive from the McDonalds’ home in West Hills. They live just above a park where kids play soccer and Little League. Nearby, a new development called Monte Vista advertises homes “starting in the low 400s.” A bit farther away are the communities of Hidden Hills and Bell Canyon, where homes are far pricier.

That movie theater--behind it, to be precise--is where 16-year-old Ramtin Shaolian was killed June 9 in a drive-by shooting that occurred, police say, after Shaolian scoffed at his assailants’ question as to whether he and his friends were gang members.

I’ve written two columns about this slaying; this makes three. In Los Angeles, the drive-by shooting is a sadly common tactic. What made this one unusual was the mix of young people drawn together, willingly or otherwise, by the allure of “gangsta” culture.

The victims were children of Iranian immigrants who, like many other young people, disturb their parents with their mimicry of gang fashion and language. The suspects include, to borrow the terminology used by police and other sources, two 19-year-old black gang members, including the alleged gunman, and four juvenile girls, including a white 17-year-old who is the alleged driver. One of the girls is black, and the other three fall under the broad label of “white”; more precisely, one is Persian and another Israeli. At least three of the girls are said to come from very affluent families who live in the hills south of Ventura Boulevard.

Madeline McDonald’s letter echoed sentiments that also cross cultural lines, that have been felt by too many people in too many neighborhoods. It wasn’t the familiar shock that something so terrible could happen so close to such a “nice” neighborhood as her own. She was beyond shock. This was an expression of grief, dread and desperation.

“We have a 17-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son,” she wrote, “and I’m terrified every time they’re out at night.”

It wasn’t just the mall slaying. Madeline McDonald proceeded to describe how crime had menaced her family.

Only eight days before Shaolian was killed, she wrote, her daughter, Erin, was driving west on Saticoy Street when a “white late model Mustang” occupied by “two Latino males” pulled to her side at a red light. They revved their engine but she stared straight ahead. When the light turned green, Erin pulled out at normal speed. The men waited, then pulled slightly ahead.

“The passenger rolled down his window, stuck a gun out of the car and fired two shots at her car. Then they took off, leaving her terrified but unhurt. But they slowed down at the next light. . . . They were obviously waiting for her, so she made a quick right and lost them.” Erin later told me the gunman seemed to be aiming at her tires. Police say the matter is under investigation.

Madeline went on to describe how only a couple of days later, Erin visited the grave of a Calabasas High classmate who had been killed in a drive-by shooting in January. Madeline also described how, one night last summer, her son, Daniel, was robbed at knifepoint of $15. She described other violent incidents that involved neighborhood children and her children’s classmates.

As if making a police report, she matter-of-factly noted the racial and ethnic description of the perpetrators.

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When is race relevant? The question often lurks beneath the surface. Over the phone, Madeline McDonald, who is white, seemed much less interested in race than the feeling that violence seems everywhere.

The other day, Madeline said, her boss, an Agoura Hills resident, was talking about how he watched a boy named Jimmy Farris grow up--a boy who, on May 22, was fatally stabbed in a back-yard clubhouse. Two 18-year-olds and three juveniles face various charges in the killing. “They’re all white,” Madeline noted.

All of it may be why, after the slaying of Ramtin Shaolian, Madeline felt compelled to add flowers to the makeshift shrine his friends had erected on the site of the shooting.

“There were many people there,” she wrote, “including a lot of young people who are spending too much time crying for murdered friends these days. I cried all the way home too, feeling as much a victim.”