Witness Fails to Identify Boy as Killer

The grandson of a Watts activist slain last year could identify only one of two teenagers who stood trial Monday for the murder of the 82-year-old woman.

The grandson’s testimony was portrayed by the attorney for one defendant, who just turned 13, as a significant blow to the prosecution’s case. “Their most reliable witness was unable to identify my client as the shooter,” lawyer Dwight Pearson said at the close of the first day’s Juvenile Court proceedings.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter said Dumar Starks, 34, was never expected to identify more than one of two youths charged with gunning down Viola McClain on July 26, 1996, on the front porch of her home. As early as today, Hunter said, authorities will produce another witness who will identify the 13-year-old, who was 11 at the time of the shooting, as the second armed assailant in the case.

Both teenagers have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The other youth is 16.

Starks’ testimony in the Downey courtroom of Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills opened what is expected to be an emotional, weeklong trial over the final, tragic moments of a crime rampage that claimed McClain and included the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl. The rape case already has been concluded, with five defendants, including the 13-year-old boy now on trial for murder, found guilty of sexual assault.

The crimes, according to authorities, began on a Friday afternoon when a group of perhaps 10 young people, ages 11 to 20, gathered at an abandoned duplex on 111th Street near the Nickerson Gardens housing project.

In the late afternoon, authorities say, the group first dragged the young girl into the home and sexually assaulted her and then attempted to kill her by setting the house on fire. Twice, according to Los Angeles police and neighbors, several of the youths set out to commit arson to cover up the crime. And when Starks confronted two of the assailants, authorities say, they opened fire on him and instead killed his grandmother, who had just returned home to the Craftsman bungalow she had lived in since 1935.

As the murder trial opened, the defendants entered Mills’ courtroom in bright orange jumpsuits, their ankles cuffed as they sat, fidgeting, in chairs a few feet from their attorneys.

Under questioning by prosecutor Hunter, McClain’s grandson recalled how he twice confronted the youths at the abandoned house about setting fires. The second confrontation, he said, sparked the deadly gunfire.

“I asked them why they were setting fires inside of the house,” Starks recalled.

“They said they could set fires whenever they wanted,” he added. Moments later, he testified, the older youth produced a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun while his companion yelled out, “Shoot him, blood.”

When the gun jammed, Starks said, he fled to his grandmother’s home to retrieve his own gun and heard the first bullet just as he passed his grandmother on their porch.

After another seven or eight shots rang out, Starks said, he found his gun and was on his way back outside when he saw his grandmother begin to fall after being struck by a bullet. “When I got to the front door, she was going down,” he said.

Starks’ testimony about the shooting was echoed in large part by a neighbor and lifelong friend, Garry Maston, 40, who recalled how he and others on the street ducked for cover when the gunfire began.

It was only after the shooting ended, Maston recalled, that he knew McClain had been hit. “That’s when [Starks] started hollering, ‘They shot Grandma! They shot Grandma!’ ” Maston testified, describing how he tried in vain to revive her from a fatal bullet wound to the neck.

Defense attorney Pearson insisted that his client is innocent and wrongly portrayed as a young predator.

“He’s a tender-hearted . . . boy who now has a stuttering problem as a result of this [prosecution],” Pearson told reporters.

Describing his first meeting with the boy, hours after the arrest last August, Pearson said the youngster was overcome by the charges facing him. “When he saw me, he burst into tears,” the attorney recalled. “He said, ‘Mr. Pearson, I didn’t do anything.’ ”

But after Monday’s session had ended, McClain’s grandson said he has faith in the prosecution’s case.

“My trust is with the detectives. I just don’t feel they would falsely accuse [the younger youth] of this,” Starks said. “If I did think that, being a man, I would definitely speak out.”