Murder Charge Dropped in ’92 Slaying of Taft Student

Saying crucial witnesses who are friends of the defendant have vanished, prosecutors Tuesday dropped a murder charge against a 20-year-old alleged gang member accused of killing a Taft High School football player in 1992.

But the defendant, Oscar Lopez, remains in custody on armed robbery charges, and the murder charge will be refiled against him if evidence can be found, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Fisch said.

“If he didn’t have the robbery charge, the murder charge would have been refiled immediately,” Fisch said.

The missing witnesses are four friends of Lopez’s who reported that he bragged about fatally stabbing 15-year-old LaMoun Thames, Fisch said. That leaves only one witness who could testify to Lopez’s alleged boasts, Fisch said, and so she dropped the murder charge as Lopez’s trial date loomed.

“It’s a tough case,” she said. “I want to put on all the witnesses he bragged to.”

“We have done everything” to find the witnesses, including taking several trips to state prisons, Fisch said.

Thames was sitting at a bus stop at Winnetka Avenue and Ventura Boulevard after a preseason football practice in August 1992 when a carload of teenagers drove up and asked for his gang affiliation.

When Thames, who was not a gang member, said he did not belong to a gang, Lopez and another youth emerged and repeatedly stabbed Thames, authorities said. Thames stumbled 50 feet before dying.

Thames had been riding buses 35 miles to Taft from his home in South Los Angeles to try to escape the violence that plagued his own neighborhood. A member of Taft’s B football team, he had been trying to make the varsity squad when he was slain.

The attack was seen by several passersby, but none could positively identify Lopez. Police, however, arrested him two years later after hearing that Lopez had been boasting about the slaying, investigators said.

Lopez’s alleged accomplice, who was 15 at the time of the killing, was tried in juvenile court and sentenced to a juvenile camp.

The robbery charges against Lopez are for an alleged crime spree across the San Fernando Valley. The proceeds of the spree were allegedly turned over to Victoria Sellers--actress daughter of the late comic Peter Sellers--with whom Lopez was living, Fisch said.