A Look That Killed

Paul Johnson was quite a catch, and his young bride knew it.

Not only was the father of four extremely handsome, but he was the kind of man who cooked for her, cleaned house and ironed his own clothes. One who always gave his seat to the elderly on the bus, which he took everywhere because he never learned to drive.

Their wedding day 3 1/2 months ago “was the happiest day of my life,” Meishia Johnson, 20, recalled last week in their Arleta home.

Her “angel,” as she called him, also had a personality quirk: He harbored a lifelong discomfort with strangers looking at him--a result, relatives suspected, of growing up with mixed ethnicity in a Watts housing project.

It was his pet peeve, harmless enough, they thought. But then it got him killed.

On Feb. 7, Johnson boarded an MTA bus in Arleta for the two-hour trip to his mother’s home in Baldwin Hills. As the bus snaked through Hollywood toward downtown, Johnson--three days past his 26th birthday--was shot dead by a stranger in a bus full of horrified passengers, many of them children.

An exchange of hostile stares and a few mild words preceded the shooting, witnesses told police, but gave no hint of the violence that would ensue.

“Paul hated getting looked at,” Meishia said. “But that was no reason to kill him.”

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Police have asked for the public’s help in solving a slaying whose startling brutality and senselessness have baffled authorities, witnesses and Johnson’s grieving family. Last week, as Johnson was buried in Compton, the Los Angeles City Council offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction.

“This man took my son’s life purposely,” said Johnson’s mother, Juanita Encisco. “I hope he gets caught, and I hope soon, because I want him to pay for what he did to my son. This man took my last child from me.”

Thirteen years ago, Johnson’s older brother, Julian, died in a gang shooting. Some years earlier, the boys’ father, Paul Sr., was shot dead by a tenant after a heated argument at a property he managed.

Encisco said she never imagined her younger son would meet the same fate as his gang-member brother.

“They were completely opposite,” she said, describing Paul as a homebody, the responsible one who took care of his great-grandmother when she got sick and never gave his mother any trouble.

Johnson, a home-care worker for the elderly, was a loving father of three children, all under the age of 5, from a previous relationship, Meishia said. He cared for a fourth, unrelated child as his own, she added.

His widow and mother described him as a health buff and devoted Bible student who in the weeks before he died had thought seriously of becoming a Jehovah’s Witness.

“But the one thing was, he didn’t like people looking at him,” Encisco said.

Born to Native American and African American parents, Johnson didn’t look like the other children in his neighborhood, said Encisco, a full-blooded Crow Indian. Kids beat him up. Sometimes even adults made fun of his wavy hair, which he purposely grew long--often pulled back in a ponytail--because of his ethnic heritage, Encisco said. “Being two different nationalities was hard on [him].”

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The Feb. 7 incident started around noon on an MTA route 420 bus in North Hollywood.

Johnson had been sitting near the rear exit for about 35 minutes when a man boarded at Lankershim Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue, walking past him to find a seat.

“Why are you looking at me?” Johnson said in a matter-of-fact tone, rising out of his seat, witnesses told police.

The man casually replied, “Hey, don’t sweat it. There’s nothin’ going on”--or words to that effect, witnesses said. Johnson then sat down.

For the next 20 minutes, as the bus lurched along, Johnson turned around a couple of times to glare at the man, but no further words were exchanged.

When the bus stopped at the corner of Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, the passenger rose, pulled out a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and coolly fired at Johnson’s head.

He was hit by three bullets and killed instantly, said LAPD Hollywood Division Det. Vicki Bynum. A fourth bullet flew through the bus and struck a passing car.

“He fired a gun at a bus that was full of elderly people, young children,” said Hollywood Division Det. Lloyd Parry. About a quarter of the passengers were children younger than 10, witnesses said.

“It’s miraculous that no one else was hurt or killed,” Bynum said.

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Witnesses said they were struck by the killer’s ordinary, clean-cut appearance. They described him as an African American in his early 20s, 5-foot-10 to 6-feet tall and weighing 180 to 200 pounds. He had a thin mustache and light goatee, and wore his hair short and knotted in an unusual fashion, witnesses recalled. The man wore a light shirt, dark knee-length jacket, off-white jeans and tan boots.

Most horrifying to witnesses was that the two men--who by all appearances were not acquainted--never demonstrated anger toward each other. Neither raised his voice and there was no physical contact between them before the bullets struck, witnesses said.

“[The killer’s] whole presentation was mild with a capital M,” said a witness, who asked not to be identified. “The way it was done, it was so casual. It was like, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going to execute you on my way out the bus.’ ”

The killer tucked the gun into his waistband and left through the rear exit. He walked briskly eastward on Hollywood Boulevard at about 12:30 p.m.

Packed into that stretch of the boulevard--the epicenter of Hollywood tourism--are Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium, the Hollywood Wax Museum, souvenir shops and eateries. Because it was Sunday, the street was full of cars and pedestrians. Though police arrived almost immediately, a witness recalled, Johnson’s killer had already disappeared into the crowd.

That the killer walked away rather than ran is another clue to his identity, police said.

“Besides being cold-blooded, he’s not a stranger to crime,” Bynum said. “This guy was methodical about the whole thing.”

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Johnson’s children, who live with their mother in Watts, are too young to fully grasp that their father is never coming back. “It’s heartbreaking for me, because we have to explain it over and over again until they understand,” Encisco said.

“You never get over losing a loved one,” she said. “It’s a constant ache. I go to sleep I feel it. I wake up I feel it.”

Meishia remains haunted by something Johnson said to her a few days before he died: “I’m tired of people looking at me funny. I’m tired of these crowded buses.”

Los Angeles police have requested that anyone with information about this crime call Parry or Bynum at (213) 485-6410.