Bereaved Mother Faces Child’s Killers

One by one, five reputed gang members were led into court Wednesday, each facing the wrath of a sobbing woman. They had kidnapped, then killed her 7-month-old daughter in a fiery crash during a police chase.

“You had knowledge of what you were doing when you got in that car,” Sonja Spencer told one of them, the 24-year-old driver, Kenyon Pitts. “My baby laid on the back seat, crying until she died.”

The men did not apologize, or even flinch, as Spencer spoke of the void they had left in her life. And then, one by one, they were led away in chains, to begin serving life prison sentences without the possibility of parole.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles Horan sentenced the five--four of whom had lengthy criminal records--for abducting the baby’s father and killing the child.

Jainah Alexis Spencer died Feb. 21 in her Mickey Mouse pajamas after a car driven by Pitts spun out of control and hit a tree in Lancaster, about 100 miles from where she had been snatched from her mother at gunpoint.

Pitts and four others--Marcel Cloud, 30; Herman St. Amie, 30; Cephus Sudduth, 25, and Ronald Cains, 24--were convicted last month of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping for ransom and related offenses.

According to police and prosecutors, the gang members first abducted and beat Jainah’s father, Robert Lewis Davis, 29, in South-Central Los Angeles in hopes of getting money from him. He led them to Spencer’s apartment in Inglewood.

When she didn’t have any cash, they abducted the baby at gunpoint and held her as “collateral” for additional money they hoped to get from Davis’ mother, who lived in Lancaster. Prosecutors said the men threatened several times to kill the baby if they didn’t receive any money.

After Davis and the kidnappers arrived at his mother’s house in Lancaster, a relative slipped away and called sheriff’s deputies. When deputies arrived, four of the kidnappers escaped with the baby, starting an 11-mile chase that reached speeds of 100 mph.

Pitts, who drove with the headlights off to escape detection, lost control when the car hit a ditch, sailed into the air, struck a tree and caught fire.

The men suffered only bruises and broken bones in the crash. Jainah died of head injuries.

A sixth participant who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified for the prosecution said that Jainah was awake and crying throughout the pursuit.

“This was a travesty,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter, the prosecutor, as a jury returned guilty verdicts last month. “Everybody who has dealt with this case, from the family of the baby to the sheriff’s deputies, has been deeply and emotionally affected by it. They [the kidnappers] had more than one opportunity to stop, to get the baby out of the car, and they did nothing.”