Man in Wheelchair Arrested in Slaying

A paraplegic man confined to a wheelchair was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing his mother’s boyfriend at their home in an affluent Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood where crime of any kind is rare.

After a family fight, David Carl Rice, 30, allegedly shot Troy Holmes, 22, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said.

On hilly Colt Road, neighbors and family friends who gathered Monday in hushed circles outside the Rice home said they don’t hold the son responsible.

“A paraplegic was trying to save his mother. That’s self-defense,” said the Rice family’s pastor, who came to the house.

“An argument was going on, and David was trying to tell the man to leave his mother alone,” said the pastor, who would not give his name because he fears the victim’s family. The pastor drove the suspect’s mother, Candy Rice, away from the home Monday afternoon “to protect her from retaliation,” he said.

Neighbors and friends described the family as hard-working, religious and loving, but they said they could often hear Candy Rice fighting with her live-in boyfriend late into the night.

Patrol cars came to the house on more than one occasion to break up those fights, said Kio Bahrami, who lives down the street. Sheriff’s officials said they could not confirm that they visited the house in the past to quell fights.

“David is the most gentle person. How can he be suspected of murder?” asked a next-door neighbor, who did not want to give her name.

She said she was asleep early Monday morning when the Rice family’s 13-year-old daughter banged on the front door and woke her up.

Come quick, the daughter told her. Something terrible has happened.

The neighbor called 911 and rushed next door to watch as law enforcement officials descended on the secluded neighborhood.

The woman stressed that the mother, son and daughter had been dedicated to each other through hard times.

When David Carl Rice became paralyzed in a motorcycle accident several years ago, his mother and sister helped nurse him in the family’s palatial pink stucco house overlooking the Long Beach port.

Candy Rice worked in the music industry and had helped manage music videos for Michael Jackson, the family’s pastor said.

“You don’t expect this kind of thing to happen here,” said Bahrami, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years. “Normally, the only thing you hear around here are birds chirping.”

The last murder committed in Ranchos Palos Verdes, a wealthy peninsula town of 43,000 people, was in 1998 and the one before that was in 1996, sheriff’s deputies said.