Boy, 12, Charged With Murder in Watts Slaying

A 12-year-old boy believed to have fired the shots that killed an 82-year-old Watts grandmother July 26 was charged with murder and attempted murder Wednesday.

Because the boy is under 14, California law requires him to be tried in Juvenile Court and limits his penalty to being confined to the California Youth Authority until the age of 25. He has been in custody since the week after the shooting on rape charges.

(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.)

The slaying of Viola McClain across from the Nickerson Gardens housing project, where the boy lived, was particularly shocking because the shooting occurred shortly after the boy allegedly participated in the abduction and gang rape of a 13-year-girl in a vacant house next door to McClain’s.

If convicted, the boy--who was 11 when the shooting occurred--would be among the youngest in Los Angeles County to be found guilty of murder, said Suzanne Childs, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. The youngest known convicted murderer in Los Angeles was a 12-year-old boy found guilty in Juvenile Court three years ago of killing a Monrovia bicycle shop owner.

Family members of the Watts boy declined to comment. The boy’s court-appointed attorney, Dwight Pearson, said the boy’s mother is extremely upset. Pearson said the boy has asserted his innocence. The lawyer said the boy has been set up by older members of a local street gang responsible for the killing.

“My thinking is that they want to sacrifice a 12-year-old boy because they know he will not get as much time as an adult will,” Pearson said. “There’s an adult behind this situation. I mean, where did these kids get their guns?”

In early August the district attorney filed kidnapping, rape and other sexual assault charges against the 12-year-old. Four other boys--ranging in age from 13 to 16--and a 20-year-old adult, Reginald Barner, are also in custody and have been charged in connection with the gang rape. Barner is being held on an $825,000 bond.

(Technically, the boy will not be found guilty or innocent in Juvenile Court. In that system, prosecutors file a “petition” and the judge finds the petition to be either true or false.)

Prosecutors and police said the murder and attempted murder petitions were not filed until Wednesday--54 days after the rape and shooting--because they already had the 12-year-old suspect in custody for the rape charge.

“He wasn’t going anyplace. . . . This was a significant crime that had a significant impact on the community. It was our responsibility to make sure it was thoroughly, completely investigated,” said LAPD Lt. John Dunkin.

The boy is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Long Beach for the two new petitions. A trial date is also scheduled to be set Monday for the boy and four other juveniles charged with the gang rape.

The juveniles and Barner are officially charged with kidnapping for child molestation, performing a forcible lewd act on a child, forcible rape in concert and oral copulation in concert. Barner was also charged with anal and genital penetration by a foreign object with a person under the age of 16.

Police say McClain’s murder was triggered by the rape that took place inside an abandoned house next to her home on East 111th Street.

In the hours before the shooting, a group of boys and at least one man raped the girl in the house and tried to burn the building down, with the girl still inside, authorities said.

As several of the suspects tried to set fire to a mattress in front of the house, McClain’s grandson, Dumar Starks, 33, noticed the smoke and confronted the boys when one allegedly drew a gun, police said.

Starks went back into his grandmother’s house for a gun. McClain stepped outside onto the porch and was shot through the neck. She died shortly afterward in a hospital emergency room.

Starks was named as the victim in the attempted murder petition filed against the boy.

On Aug. 1, Police Chief Willie L. Williams took the extraordinary step of publicly naming the 12-year-old boy as a suspect at a news conference after obtaining permission from a Juvenile Court judge. Later than night, the boy, escorted by his mother, turned himself in.

The mother believes “in her heart that her son is innocent,” lawyer Pearson said Wednesday.