2 Taft Seniors Win Thames Scholarships

Two Taft High School seniors won $1,000 scholarships Tuesday night in memory of LaMoun Thames, a Taft student fatally stabbed at a Woodland Hills bus stop four years ago.

David Cook and Erika Guardado are hard-working, average students with good character who share Thames’ dream of going to college, said Suzanne Lewis, a Woodland Hills parent whose daughter was one of Thames’ classmates.

Guardado, a Student Senate member and a volunteer, will attend the Los Angeles DeVry Institute. Cook, the football team co-captain, will study at Los Angeles Harbor College in the fall.

Both seniors “ride the bus for an hour each day, just like LaMoun did to get to Taft,” Lewis said.

The scholarship, now in its second year and endowed by actor Tony Danza, honors the memory of Thames, who was a 15-year-old Taft High student when he was killed four years ago while waiting for a bus at Winnetka Avenue and Ventura Boulevard after a preseason football practice.

Thames, who had been riding buses to Taft from South Los Angeles to escape neighborhood violence, was approached by a carload of teenagers who asked his gang affiliation. When Thames said he did not belong to a gang, two youths emerged from the car and stabbed him to death.

An alleged gang member, Oscar Andres Lopez, 20, of Northridge was charged with the murder after he reportedly bragged of the killing to five friends. Prosecutors dropped the charges last month when four of those friends--scheduled to testify against Lopez--vanished. Lopez remains in custody on an armed robbery charge.

His accomplice, who was 15 at the time of the slaying, was tried in juvenile court and sentenced to a juvenile camp.

Thames’ mother and sister joined Lewis in announcing the scholarship winners.