History of Abuse Culminated in Bloody Rampage, Police Say

Clarence Ray Taylor, a frontyard auto mechanic with a history of domestic violence and depression, was identified by authorities Thursday as the man who killed his wife, daughter and himself a day earlier at the family home in Watts.

Taylor’s bloody rampage Wednesday afternoon came less than three years after his brother, Eugene, committed a similar crime--killing himself and his girlfriend in a South Los Angeles home--a Los Angeles Police Department official said.

Clarence Taylor’s long-running disputes with his wife, Antonia, came to a head even as the neighborhood mechanic was packing to move out of the family’s small stucco home, neighbors said.

Before Taylor, 42, could leave, he and Antonia Taylor, 39, began arguing again. He grabbed a semiautomatic pistol and began firing, perhaps even reloading once, as he shot and killed his wife and his daughter, Antoniek, 21, homicide detectives said. Another daughter, 12, and a niece, 26, were wounded and remained hospitalized in stable condition Thursday.

Police said they had been called to the home previously on complaints of domestic violence, and Taylor was on probation for abusing his wife.

But neighbors said nothing overtly changed in the days and hours leading up to the shootings. Residents of the 10800 block of South Gorman Avenue said Taylor had continued his usual routine--fixing an occasional car as a “shade tree” mechanic, playing dominoes and hanging out with friends.

“He used to say he was depressed and that things weren’t going his way. He was having problems in his home and he was taking some kind of medication,” said one neighbor. “But nothing showed he would snap like this.”

Police confirmed that assessment. Family members suspected that Taylor had gone off his medication, perhaps helping trigger his agitation, police said.

“I think with Clarence, he didn’t talk to anybody about what was going on and then he just dealt with it in the wrong way,” said Perry Crouch, a neighbor and community activist.

“He was out of a job. He was having financial problems and had some mental problems and problems with the Probation Department and problems with his wife,” said Lt. John Dunkin, commander of the LAPD’s South Bureau Homicide. “That all came together. Then you bring a firearm into that situation and it’s a volatile combination.”

Family members, busy cleaning out the home Thursday, declined to comment. Crouch said that the Taylors and many people in the community could use therapy to help deal with the losses. “This isn’t over yet,” he said. “People need to work this out.”

It was less than three years ago, in September 1996, that Clarence Taylor’s brother, Eugene, 32, shot and killed his girlfriend, Stephanie Vargas, 32, and then turned the gun on himself, Dunkin said.

That shooting was described as a “boyfriend-girlfriend dispute.” Police could provide no further details.