Two Tragedies Intersect in Courtroom

The killer recited a poem he wrote about his difficult upbringing in a crime-ridden neighborhood of South-Central Los Angeles.

The 9-year-old victim’s aunt bemoaned the fact that her nephew was trying to evade the very gangs that the killer embraced.

And then a judge sentenced 24-year-old Victor Adegbenro to at least 75 years in prison.

Young Selwyn Leflore Jr. was waiting for a bus at Compton’s Martin Luther King Jr. Transit Center with his mother and two younger brothers in October 1997 when he was killed by Adegbenro’s errant bullet, meant for a rival gang member.

Selwyn was on his way back from school, where administrators had selected him as a “peacekeeper,” one of several students who monitor the playgrounds and bathrooms in order to protect other students.

Adegbenro, a gang member, saw a rival in a car at the bus station and opened fire.

On Friday, as Selwyn’s aunt, Gwen Leflore, watched, Adegbenro spoke of being physically abused as a child, of living in poverty, of struggling to protect himself from his enemies.

“I still wish I could fly out of this deep rut,” he told the court. “Now I’m behind steel bars trying to make sense.”

Earlier in the hearing, Gwen Leflore said her nephew, the oldest of five children, took care of his siblings while his father worked 14-hour days as an airport baggage handler. She talked about how Selwyn forced his brothers and sisters to stay inside the house when the gangs were lurking outside.

“Little Selwyn was not just a victim,” said Leflore, tears streaming down her face as she looked at Adegbenro. “He was a bright, loving, caring child who deplored gang violence, talking often of becoming a productive man.”

When it was his turn to speak, Adegbenro said he too dreamed of becoming a productive man. “When I was a child of 9, I know I wanted something better than my life in Compton,” he said.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury convicted Adegbenro in January of second-degree murder. Before pronouncing sentence Friday, Judge Lance A. Ito said the case was particularly tragic “because the life that was taken here was an innocent life and was needlessly taken.”

Later, outside the courtroom, Leflore and Adegbenro’s fiancee, Maria Beasley, took turns listening to each other’s answers to reporters’ questions. Beasley listened shyly to Leflore; Leflore glowered as Beasley insisted that Adegbenro loved children and could never have committed this crime.

Leflore, who works as a clerk for a county agency, said she and Selwyn’s father, Selwyn Leflore Sr., did not understand how a difficult childhood could turn a person into a killer.

“He said the reasons for him doing the things he did are because of the world he grew up in,” she said, her voice growing stronger with each word.

“I grew up in that world. My brother grew up in that world and he did all the things he could do to make sure his children did not have to suffer like this.”