Daughter Searches for Explanation of Mother’s Killing

The question may always linger for Inez Crenshaw: Why?

Crenshaw says she has no idea why, as police allege, her younger brother fatally shot their mother as she worked in the kitchen just after midnight on Christmas morning.

“I’ll probably never know why,” she said Tuesday in the vestibule of the apartment building where she lived with her mother, Patricia Ricks, near the Santa Monica Freeway and La Cienega Boulevard. “They weren’t arguing or anything.”

In fact, she said, 21-year-old Robert Earl Ricks Jr., who lives in Van Nuys with his girlfriend and their 1- and 2-year-old children, had been “in and out” of his mother’s home that evening.

At one point, Crenshaw said, “Mama had given him a big hug and told him, ‘I love you, baby.’ ” At another, Robert asked about their mother’s health, saying he was worried about her hypertension.

Another topic of conversation had been Robert’s 1-year-old boy, whom Ricks had recently been caring for. Ricks complimented her son on the boy, saying “how much she appreciated . . . getting to know his little 1-year-old personality,” Crenshaw said. Robert, she said, just listened quietly.

But her brother had been upset about the death a few months ago of their father, who had been separated from their mother for at least a decade. Father and son had been close, Crenshaw said.

“I don’t know if he is angry about [the death] and feels it was unfair,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Crenshaw, 31, said she had expected to spend Christmas Day introducing her fiance to her mother. Instead, she spent it holding a news conference outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southwest Division headquarters, pleading with her brother to turn himself in, and tending to her own 4-year-old son who had seen his grandmother lying dead on the floor. Crenshaw’s older son had been visiting other relatives.

Crenshaw said that by midnight Christmas Eve, she had wished her mother good night and gone to her own room, while her mother, who often stayed up until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. cooking, remained in the kitchen preparing four cheesecakes for Christmas.

Crenshaw’s three sisters also were in the three-bedroom apartment in other rooms. Robert, she said, had left.

She didn’t hear anyone enter the apartment, Crenshaw said. When she heard gunshots, they seemed to be outside. She dialed 911.

As she opened her bedroom door, she said, she saw her mother on the floor. She also saw the back of a man leaving. He was wearing a jacket that she recognized as her brother’s. “I knew it was him,” she said.

Police described Robert Ricks as a gang member, though Crenshaw said she believed he was inactive. She said she did not know what he did for a living, although he sometimes worked in construction.

“Bobby,” she said, “was just Bobby. He took care of his family. I never questioned how.” His only local criminal record as an adult, according to court records, was a conviction earlier this year for driving without a valid license and possession of a small amount of marijuana.

Police found him Monday afternoon hiding in a backyard about two miles from his mother’s home, near the Santa Monica Freeway and Western Avenue in the neighborhood where he had grown up. He surrendered peacefully.

LAPD Homicide Det. Rick Gordon said police plan to ask the district attorney’s office to charge him with murder today.

In the meantime, they are as puzzled about a motive as Crenshaw is.

“He’s probably the only that can give the reason as to what his motive was, and he hasn’t,” Gordon said. “All he wanted to do when we approached him was sleep. He didn’t want to talk to us, which is his right, of course.”

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Times staff writer Caitlin Liu contributed to this story.