Double Tragedy : Gang Violence Claimed Youths Despite Mothers’ Vigilance

Rebecca Moore and Yolanda Burks never let down their guard against the gang menace that was claiming so many young South Los Angeles youngsters.

They kept close watch over their boys--carefully monitoring their friends and their progress at school. They made their homes comfortable places so their boys wouldn’t be tempted as teenagers to hang out on the street.

Moore watched with relief as son Larry Logan graduated from high school, entered the clothing business and--at the age of 23--began mapping plans to launch his own clothing line.

Burks watched with pride as son Aaron Johnson, 17, enrolled at Cal State Northridge as a music major and moved into a campus dorm last month.

So it was doubly devastating when Logan and Johnson were gunned down Sunday by gang members--and the murders were chalked up in the news as two more “gang-related” slayings in Los Angeles.

“Victims of senseless gang violence” is a better way of putting it, the two grieving mothers said Tuesday. Los Angeles police said they agree.

“These were not gang members,” Det. Steven Heglar said. “These were good, clean-cut kids, victims in the truest sense of the word. These two young men were squeaky clean.”

It was a fluke that Logan and Johnson were out at 3:25 a.m. Sunday, when two young men in a white Honda hatchback pulled alongside, uttered something at the pair and then fired two shots.

Johnson had gone to a friend’s house to pick up a computer disk he needed for a Cal State Northridge class assignment, according to his mother. Logan was riding with him when Johnson’s 1984 Toyota Tercel stalled on 10th Avenue between West 25th Street and Adams Boulevard, a short distance from Johnson’s family home.

A friend riding in the back seat who escaped injury told investigators he heard gang references shouted from the Honda before the shots were fired. That led police to initially speculate that the shooting was the result of “possible gang involvement.”

Moore and Burks have never met each other. But separately Tuesday both mourned not only the loss of their sons but the suggestion that they had been in any way connected with gangs.

“He was my only child,” Moore said tearfully. “He never once talked back to me in his whole 23 years. He often talked about how bad gangs were.

“A few years ago we talked about an article about gangs and about innocent people being killed. I told him I was so proud of him for staying out of that.”

Moore, a 39-year-old front office staff member at a large hotel, raised Logan as a single parent with the help of her mother, Wilma Holly. The boy’s late grandfather, Merle Holly, was a role model--often taking young Larry to the advertising agency where he worked.

“You make a strong family bond and they’re not going to be out on the street looking for another family,” Moore said.

Logan had a quick wit and a sweet voice: he sang for fun, sometimes using the family’s dime-a-minute phone company rate to call distant relatives and sing for them, family members said.

Burks said she breathed easier when her son moved out of South Los Angeles and into a Cal State Northridge dorm last month.

“I’d worried about gangs, how these gangbangers had declared war on all black children and how sickening it was,” said Burks, a 36-year-old homemaker. “But he was the farthest thing from gangs. He managed to go 17 years without getting involved.

“We had a happy little home, me and him and his brother,” Burks said, referring to her 12-year-old son. “It’s hard to tell how he’s taking this. He’s in shock.”

Music was Aaron’s passion. He was skilled on the saxophone and was learning to play other instruments in college. Hours before his murder, Aaron had gently chided Burks for calling him each morning at his dorm to wake him up for class. “He said, ‘Mother, you’re the only parent doing it. You don’t have to nag me now,” she recalled sadly.

On Tuesday afternoon, both mothers took a break from planning their sons’ separate funerals. Burks went to the Northridge campus to retrieve her son’s university belongings. Moore went to the coroner’s office to pick up her son’s personal property.

Police say they have no leads in the case.