Teenager’s Slaying After Game Escalates Fears of Violence

Ricky Evans always marched to his own beat. While other teens were seduced by drugs and gangs, the 15-year-old aspiring drummer from Panorama City joined a neighborhood drill team and had planned to march next month in a demonstration to “stop the violence.”

But violence stopped Ricky on Friday night when a drive-by shooting after a Monroe High School football game claimed the life of the ambitious sophomore.

“I’m just sick and tired of this,” sobbed 24-year-old George Fields, the boyfriend of Ricky’s older sister. “This boy ain’t nothing but 15 years old. He didn’t do nothing to nobody.

“He can’t even go to a football game?”

Los Angeles police said Saturday that they had made no arrests but were following several leads suggesting that blame for the shooting rested on either gang machismo or spiteful fans from Crenshaw High School, which lost Friday’s game by one point.

Violence accompanying football games is nothing new to the region’s high schools.

Last year, one teenager was killed and another wounded after a football game between Playa del Rey’s St. Bernard High School and Long Beach’s Jordan High. A month earlier, a 20-year-old man was shot in the lower back in front of Westchester High School during a game against Washington High. The same night, a game between Inglewood and Lynwood high schools was halted with nearly two minutes remaining after sheriff’s deputies became worried about fighting on the Inglewood side of the field.

After Ricky was killed, the mother of one of his friends said she had dreaded just such a tragedy because of those earlier incidents and because of escalating violence in the surrounding neighborhood.

Police records show that despite a decrease in overall crime citywide, San Fernando Valley homicides have increased 20% so far this year over last, and that many of them occurred in the north Valley and are believed to be gang-related.

“I’m going to let [my son] learn from this,” said Yvonne Archibald, whose son was among a group of about eight teenagers with Ricky when the drive-by shooting happened. She said she had not wanted her son to attend Friday night’s game because “there is too much stuff going on.”

The Monroe students, including Ricky, were walking north on Aqueduct Avenue about 10 p.m., returning to the high school from a gas station, when the shooting occurred. The street was dark and they noticed a white Cadillac pull up slowly behind them, police said.

“A suspect inside the car asked, ‘Where are you from?’ ” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Dennis Feeley. The teenagers didn’t respond. Someone in the car reportedly yelled out “Crenshaw” before shots rang out. Ricky was hit in the chest and died at the scene.

The Cadillac, which had one headlight out, sped north on Aqueduct.

Police said the shooting had the classic markings of a gang slaying.

“They scream the name of the gang, this is where it comes from and then bang, bang, bang,” said Sgt. Rich Groller, officer in charge of the LAPD’s gang investigation unit, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. He added that Ricky and his friends did not appear to be gang members.

Although walking in a group once meant safety in numbers, now it signifies gang-banging, and groups become targets.

“Safety has got to come first,” said Lisa Keating. A former president of the Los Amigos Parent Teacher Association, which represents 17 schools in the north Valley.

“You have to meet the needs of the community. You have the homeowners, innocent bystanders. . . . I’m tired of hearing about people being struck by bullets. It’s out of control,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified School District Police Sgt. Kenny Davenport said the district beefs up security at playoff games, adding that schools themselves usually have little to do with violence on or near campus. He said that despite the shooting, Friday night football games are safe.

As standard procedure, the school district police will provide extra patrol at Monroe High School next week, Davenport said. A crisis team of counselors and psychologists also is expected to visit the school on Monday.