Family Tells of Slain Gunman’s Anger at Koon

Randall Tolbert went with gun in hand to hunt down former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey C. Koon because he was angry that one of the men convicted of beating Rodney G. King had been sent to a halfway house in the predominantly black Riverside County community where Tolbert lived, his family and friends said Friday.

Tolbert was stoked on three days’ use of the powerful stimulant PCP, but promised his mother when he left the family home that he would be back in time to bake a Thanksgiving cake, family members said.

Unable to find Koon, Tolbert killed one of his three hostages Thursday before he was shot to death by a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team that stormed the facility.

Koon had moved out of the Re-Entry Community Corrections Center in Rubidoux on Nov. 13 to complete the last weeks of his 30-month federal prison term in home confinement, a federal prison spokesman said.

Family members said Tolbert, 35, did not know Koon.

But, said Tolbert’s younger brother Deric, “his encounter with Koon was the same as every other black man’s--he saw Koon whipping Rodney King’s ass on TV.”

David Tolbert Jr. said the only inkling his brother gave about taking action against Koon came Wednesday night. “He said he wanted to make a point about Stacey Koon being there. The fact that he was here was eating at all of us.”

On Friday, Tolbert’s 65-year-old father, David Tolbert, said he could not explain what possessed his son to search out Koon. He painted a picture of a son, one of eight, who had served time in prison for several violent crimes but was trying to get his life together and start a videotaping business.

Two of his other sons said Randall Tolbert had been smoking PCP, known as angel dust, for three days before he left the family home and drove five blocks to the undistinguished, minimum security facility that was home to 27 inmates.

“He wanted to protest that Stacey Koon was living there--and [felt] that he should still” be in prison, Deric Tolbert said. “It was like they were trying to slap us in the face by putting him here.”

Officials with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department offered no motive for the attack. Koon “has not been in the news lately, except for when he came out to this facility,” said sheriff’s spokesman Mark Lohman.

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Koon’s arrival at the halfway house Oct. 17 had been widely covered in the media, and it grated on many residents in the area.

Tolbert’s friends said assigning Koon to the halfway house in Rubidoux was “an insult” to blacks, who still seethe at Koon’s role in the videotaped King beating.

The acquittal of Koon and three other officers in state court touched off the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the worst in modern U.S. history. Koon was later convicted of federal civil rights violations.

Ira Salzman, Koon’s attorney, said his client did not know Tolbert and could not recall any dealings with him.

“Death threats are nothing new,” Salzman said, adding that during Koon’s trial he and Koon received so many that he placed armed guards in his law offices.

While Koon was in federal prison in Oregon, he was constantly insulted but never physically assaulted, Salzman said. An unsigned threat was delivered to the Rubidoux halfway house when Koon was first sent there, he said.

“Of course it’s of concern,” Salzman said of the threats. “He doesn’t deserve the death penalty for what he’s done.”

Salzman said he and his client had expressed reservations about the assignment to Rubidoux but did not ask federal authorities for a transfer. The threat and the roughness of the neighborhood compounded their chief concern--that the facility was a long way from Koon’s home.

Salzman, who declined to comment on his client’s whereabouts, said Koon was “happy he’s safe, thankful for that.”

The other LAPD officer convicted in King’s beating, Laurence M. Powell, is finishing his 30-month term at a halfway house in Garden Grove. Authorities said Friday that there are no plans to move him.

Neighbors in the racially mixed neighborhood said they were not bothered by Powell’s presence and he has remained mostly out of sight since his arrival at the My Break Transitional Center in late September.

“It’s a quiet neighborhood, and it’s been quiet since he moved here,” said 43-year-old Theron Chaney. “He’s just serving out his time here, that’s all. It’s no big deal to us.”

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Koon is scheduled for release Dec. 14. But authorities are temporarily transferring all federal inmates from the Rubidoux facility to other locations because of damage from the shootout.

Although Randall Tolbert shared in the anger that Koon was finishing his prison term in Rubidoux, there was no indication of exactly what he might do about it, family and friends said.

“When he got up Thursday morning, he and I made bets on the football game,” his father said. “He left around 11 and didn’t say where he was going.”

His mother, Emogene, said: “I told him he had a cake to bake--he loved baking cakes--and he said, ‘I know. I’ll be back.’ ”

After several hours passed, she paged him on his beeper, she said. He called back promptly.

“He said he was at the halfway house. I thought he was joking and I said, ‘Well, get yourself out of there.’ And he said, ‘I can’t. I’m barricaded in. I can’t get out and they can’t get in.’ And he said he loved us.”

Tolbert’s parents talked with him four more times by phone, still thinking their son was joking. In one conversation, Emogene Tolbert said, she asked her son: “ ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And he said something about angel dust.”

When friends told the family that authorities had barricaded Rubidoux Street, David Tolbert said he rushed to the fire station to see whether he could help talk his son into surrendering.

By then, the younger Tolbert had made his intentions clear to authorities. He had walked unchallenged into the unlocked, unguarded facility about 12:30 p.m., “demanding to know where Stacey Koon was,” Lohman said.

Several people bolted from the single-story facility. Tolbert shot and grazed a male resident in the dining room, then pistol-whipped a female visitor before they escaped, Lohman said.

Tolbert then took three hostages--a security guard, a vending machine servicewoman and a longtime friend who was accompanying her on her rounds before joining her family for Thanksgiving dinner, Lohman said.

The gunman then phoned Los Angeles-area television stations demanding to know Koon’s whereabouts. He said that if Koon wasn’t delivered within minutes, he would start shooting his hostages.

About this time, David Tolbert told deputies he would like to help talk his son out of the facility.

Within minutes, he said, he heard an ambulance rush to the scene and he left for home.

“I saw the SWAT team storm the place with their high-powered rifles and I thought, ‘Oh hell,’ ” Tolbert said. “I assumed the worst. I knew what they were going for.”

Lohman said the SWAT team rushed the facility after hearing a gunshot. Tolbert had shot and killed Karl Milam, 67, of Phoenix, who had been spending the day with his friend as she made her service calls.

When the team rushed through the door, Tolbert was standing there, Lohman said. He raised his gun and fired, hitting no one, and three SWAT team members fired back, killing him.

David Tolbert Jr. speculated that his brother might have gone looking for Koon “because he wanted the fame and publicity.”

The two brothers, as well as other friends, said Tolbert was something of a “godfather” in the neighborhood, intent on righting the wrongs inflicted on his friends.

“He would take things on his own, and when Koon came up, he said, ‘I’ll take care of it,’ ” David Tolbert Jr. said of his brother.

Lohman said Randall Tolbert was well-known to deputies because of his brushes with the law. He said Tolbert’s “extensive criminal history” included arrests on suspicion of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, car theft, assault on a police officer, attempted murder and narcotics violations.

Lohman said Tolbert was on parole until 1997, but his family disputed that Friday. “He went to his parole officer [in the summer of 1994] for permission to leave the area, and they told him he didn’t need their permission because his parole had been terminated. He didn’t even know it himself,” David Tolbert said.

The gunman’s parole status could not be confirmed Friday because state offices were closed.

Randall Tolbert had been living at the family home for the past year and a half and was intent on starting a videotaping business for weddings, parties and the like, his father said. “He was trying [to improve himself], but he’d just get distracted too easily.”

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story