Boy, 12, Arrested in Slaying of Watts Grandmother

A boy who turned 12 only days ago was arrested Thursday as a primary suspect in the slaying of a popular Watts grandmother who was struck by a stray bullet last week as she stood on her front porch.

In a chilling account of the death of 82-year-old Viola McClain, police said the boy took part in the shooting after spending more than an hour joining in the torture and gang rape of a 13-year-old girl at an abandoned home next door to McClain’s.

After being named as a suspect during a televised afternoon news conference, the boy walked into the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast station, escorted by his mother, and surrendered, authorities said. He was held on suspicion of murder and in police custody.

Earlier in the day, with the boy still on the loose, Police Chief Willie L. Williams took the extraordinary step of publicly releasing his name, warning that he was armed and dangerous. The names of juvenile crime suspects are rarely made public, and some legal experts questioned the decision.

Later, at a nighttime news conference announcing the arrest, police would identify the boy only as a “male juvenile.”

(The Times generally does not publish the names of juvenile crime suspects unless they are officially charged with a serious crime for which they could be prosecuted as an adult.)

Williams said that under normal circumstances, the child’s identity would not have been publicly released, but the savagery of the crimes for which he is accused and the youth’s “vicious” reputation in the neighborhood prompted authorities to obtain a Juvenile Court judge’s permission to divulge the name.

McClain’s death at dusk last Friday in the 1300 block of East 111th Street--a once-proud neighborhood that now stands in the shadows of the Nickerson Gardens housing project--was in itself a blow to her community.

A local activist who had lived in her Bible-decked bungalow since 1935, “Mother McClain” was so beloved that scores of mourners came to a candlelight memorial Wednesday night.

But on Thursday afternoon, as police announced a flurry of arrests in the case, their update took on a grimmer tone. McClain’s death, they said, was the parting shot after an orgy of viciousness at an abandoned house next door to her home.

Among other things, Williams said that during the hours preceding the shooting, as many as 10 boys and men ranging in age from 11 to 20 abducted a 13-year-old girl from the neighborhood and forced her into the vermin-infested stucco duplex.

There, he said, they raped and terrorized the child for an hour and a half before barricading her in a room. In an apparent attempt to kill their victim and cover their tracks, the chief said, the girl’s attackers tried to set fire to the house.

It was when two of the youths dragged the mattresses they had used in the attack into the front yard and tried to set them ablaze that the confrontation occurred that led to McClain’s death.

McClain’s 33-year-old grandson, Dumar Starks, said that after fuming for several hours about the commotion next door, he stormed over and told the youths to stop playing with fire. In response, he said, one of the boys pulled a semiautomatic pistol from the waistband of his pants and loaded a round into the gun.

Police said Starks then ran back into his grandmother’s house, grabbed his own gun and began to fire but hit nothing but the exterior of the house across the street. Meanwhile, McClain had stepped onto her front porch, where a stray bullet struck her in the throat. She died in the hospital’s emergency room.

After the rape victim went to the station with her family Saturday, detectives made one arrest. Reginald Barner, 20, a neighborhood man, was charged with eight counts of sexual assault.

Then, at 5 a.m. Thursday, Williams said, nearly 50 officers raided 13 locations in the neighborhood. They confiscated an assault rifle and four handguns, authorities said, and arrested four juveniles and a second adult. At that point, the 12-year-old boy and one other juvenile remained at large.

However, after speaking to the 12-year-old’s mother, authorities said they persuaded her to turn her son in.

In Nickerson Gardens, where the mother lives, residents said the boy was known in the neighborhood, but not as a resident. Several said he “hung out” more than lived in the faded blue-and-white project; others described him as a homeless runaway.

South Bureau Lt. John Dunkin said the boy’s criminal record was so severe that even the mother was afraid of him. She had told police that when she saw her son three days ago, she tried to wrestle him to the ground in a futile attempt to force him to go see his probation officer. When she realized her son was armed, however, she released him.

A 14-year-old boy who said he tutored the suspect last year in math at Edwin Markham Middle School--before the child was expelled for fighting--said, “he used to be destructive. He used to fight all the time. He used things--sticks, pencils, knives. And that’s why he got kicked out.”

It was unclear what evidence led police Thursday to pinpoint the 12-year-old as a suspect in McClain’s death. In fact, it was unclear for a time what the boy even looked like: In his afternoon televised description, Williams said the boy was 4-foot-10 and around 70 pounds, but detectives later said that Williams’ information was two years out of date and that the boy had grown substantially in that time.

Nor were police entirely certain whether the boy was the gunman. The description initially released by police described the gunman as between 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds. But the suspect’s friend describes him as “a little short kid” who weighed no more than 95 pounds.

“I can’t say at this time with certainty that he was the shooter,” said Capt. Tom Lorenzen. “But he is a primary suspect.”

Authorities acknowledge that it is common for gangs to pin felonies on their youngest affiliates, on the reasoning that children usually get lighter sentences. For example, the child named in this case could not be prosecuted as an adult in California because he is under 14.

California law also requires that the names of minors in criminal matters be kept confidential, with only two exceptions: Names can be released if the suspect is 14 or older and arrested for committing a serious felony, such as homicide, and courts can give names to school superintendents when a minor has been found guilty of committing a serious felony.

Richard Montes, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, signed the order authorizing the LAPD to release the name. However, police refused to release the text of the order or comment on Montes’ rationale. The judge could not be reached.

Some experts in juvenile law were critical.

Lisa Greer, a juvenile specialist in the county public defender’s office, said that although such orders were relatively common for minors 14 or older, she had rarely seen one issued for a child under 14.

“If you label a 12-year-old a murderer, it is going to be very difficult for him to return to his life and succeed,” said Shannan Wilber, a staff attorney at the Youth Law Center in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, on 111th Street, residents expressed outrage at the case--and at the length of time the city took to board up the abandoned property, which they had complained about for more than a year.

Neighbors said that the sagging duplex had been vacated after a drug raid last year, and shortly thereafter became a magnet for junkies and bums. Each night, they said, transients would park their shopping carts outside and crawl through the broken windows into the fetid rooms.

Ethel Hale, 69, who lives across the street from the place, said she wrote Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. four times to complain; another neighbor, Henrietta Maston, corresponded with Svorinich as recently as June 13.

But Hale said their complaints yielded little more than a couple of visits from city inspectors, who “did a lot of writing on a pad” and little more.

City records show that as part of the city’s most aggressive nuisance abatement program, a police officer and a building inspector went to the duplex two weeks ago, and issued an immediate order for the property to be boarded, fenced and cleaned.

“It was just a total mess inside,” recalled Officer Michael Lockett, who went to the site July 16. “Basically, it was just empty rooms. Inside, you’ll find a few syringes, there was gang graffiti on the walls. The rear yard was high brush and trash.”

The order was posted--along with a ‘No Trespassing’ sign--on the house July 16th, and an official letter was sent to owner Brino C. Bruno on July 29. If the owner fails to respond, city officials can clean, board and fence the property themselves and charge the owner. Bruno could not be reached for comment.

Despite statements to the contrary from Svorinich’s office and neighbors, police and building department officials said Thursday that they had not received any complaints about the house, and just happened to find it on a routine swing through the neighborhood.

But aides to Svorinich said they alert building inspectors to abandoned properties regularly, and listed the duplex as a problem as early as January.

Svorinich’s chief of staff, Barry Glickman, said the house was included in lists of abandoned homes faxed to building inspector John Sciberras again in April and July.

But Glickman said the abatement process is a “frustrating program” because it often takes city officials months or more to get properties boarded or torn down. Lockett said the empty duplex was one of at least half a dozen abandoned buildings on the blocks of 111th and 110th streets that city officials have cited in recent months.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Mark Morrow, senior inspector with the Building and Safety Department. “I wish we didn’t have so many.”

Citywide, 1,977 abandoned houses have been through the abatement process over several years, Morrow said. In the Police Department’s Southeast Division, more than 100 vacant homes have been cleaned and fenced over the past year, according to the LAPD.

A special program intended to target such vacant properties has been under way since May, 1995, and a proposal to expand the program citywide is pending.

Additionally, officials said the city received a federal grant last month for proactive nuisance abatement downtown and in South Los Angeles, but has not hired the staff to conduct the extra inspections. The three council districts covered by the grant do not include Watts.

At a local McDonald’s with his four daughters, Cornell Snell, 21, urged the police to do everything they could. Of the raped girl and McClain he said: “It could have been my daughters. It could have been my mother or grandmother. These guys need to be caught.”

Times staff writers John L. Mitchell, Duke Helfand, Alan Abrahamson, Jim Newton and correspondent Maki Becker contributed to this story.