‘He Was Already Gone’

The testimony of Deborah Bush took place Oct. 12 in Department 102 of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. She was called in the murder trial of alleged gang members accused in the Halloween ambush of three Pasadena teen-agers. Prosecutors contend that the gunmen mistook the youngsters for rivals. Bush is a 40-year-old crime scene technician for the Pasadena Police Department. Her testimony, as the following abridged transcript will show, had little to do with her professional expertise.

Q. Do you remember the events that happened on October 31st, 1993?

A. I do.

Q. Did you have two sons?

A. Yes.

Q. What were their names?

A. Stephen and Kenneth.

Q. What happened when you saw your sons?

A. Well, just to back up a little bit, I had . . . got back in town about 7 and got home and Stephanie (her oldest daughter) informed me that the boys had gone to a Halloween party and they were ordered by her--she is like a surrogate mom--to be home by 10:30. And after I picked her up, I remember when I stopped at the light . . . I looked at the clock and it was 10:30. . . . I remember telling her words to the effect that ‘If the boys are not home, I am going to go look for them.’ And after I proceeded to my house, which would be northbound on Wilson, I spotted a group and I said to her, ‘Isn’t that your brothers?’ And it was, so I stopped.

Q. Did you have a conversation with them?

A. I was speaking to Stephen . . . It was Halloween and the next day was a school holiday, and I remember stating to Stephanie, “Watch, he is going to ask if he can have these boys spend the night.” So when he came to the car--he was my jokester, so he is like, “Hey, Mom,” and I said, looking at the clock, “Aren’t you supposed to be home?”

He said, “I’m getting there.”

So, jokingly, I said, “Do you want a ride home?”

And he just said--laughed it off, he goes, “No, your car is slow; I can probably beat you home.”

I said, “OK. It’s on.” And I just drove off. We had done this before.

Q. When you saw your sons, did you see if they were carrying trick-or-treat bags?

A. Yes . . . I remember telling Stephen and Kenny both that they couldn’t eat any candy until Mommy checked the bags.

Q. What happened after you drove home and parked your car?

A. Well . . . I pulled down the driveway, opened up the door. Before I could get out I heard the shots.

Q. Did you hear more than one type of gunshot?

A. I am not an expert in gunshots. I know there was a series of 10 to 15 shots, a short pause and another nine or 10 shots.

Q. What did you do when you heard those sounds?

A. As soon as I heard the shots, I ran to the front of the house. . . . There was a large group of boys, including Stephen and Kenny, and I looked to see if they were on the porch. We have a large porch. And they weren’t there. . . . So I just took off running because I knew [the shots] were coming from the direction of where the boys were. . . . And my sister tried to grab me and tell me--because at that point there was a car that was going northbound and she grabbed me. She says, “I don’t know if they are going to shoot at us.” And I broke away from her.

Q. What happened when you ran southbound?

A. Well, while I was running, I was running and calling out Stephen and Kenny’s names because I didn’t hear anything. And I remember crossing Emerson . . . and being somebody who is trained in crime scene investigation and first aid, trying to render--see if there was anybody that was injured or, you know, what could I do. And when I got there, I noticed that there was a person down, there was two people down. I went to the first person and I checked the pulse and I realized that person was dead.

So I went to the second person, and it was--the second person, I realized it was my son, and I saw that he had a bullet in his head and he was already gone . . .

And now, her role as witness completed, the mother comes each day to court and takes a seat in the second row bench, alone. She folds her arms across her chest and sways gently back and forth, listening to it all. Deborah Bush says she comes because she wants to understand. She wants to understand exactly what happened that night on her quiet street of Pasadena bungalows, when Stephen died and Kenny was wounded. She wants to understand how 14-year-old boys with trick-or-treat bags could become prey for assassins. She wants to understand how gang members who number only in the thousands can hold a metropolis of millions hostage to terror. And s he wants to understand the anger that is, in her mind, at the root of all this madness.

“Where,” she asks, “does all this anger come from?”

Should she come to understand these things, she will be the first.