In Tragedy, Gospel Choir Seeks a Theme of Hope

It has been a fall of anguish for the children and families associated with the L.A. Inner City Mass Choir.

Tragedy rocked the South-Central choir on the evening of Sept. 5, when one of its keystones, 16-year-old Amber Laskey, was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of her grandmother’s home in the Athens district.

The shots left the choir’s 85 young members, and the families and community leaders who support them, groping for answers about who killed Amber, and why.

But now, as the choir prepares for its first solo concert since Amber’s killing, there is hope that some answers may come soon.

They lie in a shootout that took place in Marina del Rey on Monday evening. Joseph Macio Allain, a 20-year-old gang member who was notorious for violence, shot and wounded two law enforcement officers who were trying to serve a warrant at his apartment. Then Allain turned an AK-47 on himself, committing suicide.

In the days that followed, investigators disclosed that Allain--who was wanted on drug charges and in connection with an August drive-by killing in Hawthorne--was also a prime suspect in the shooting of Amber.

Hawthorne police say they have viewed Allain as a suspect in Amber’s killing--either as the triggerman or the driver--since the first descriptions of the Laskey gunman were released. They believed Amber’s killer drove a white Mercedes and used an AK-47--the style of car and gun Allain favored, according to Lt. James McInerney, lead detective at the Hawthorne Police Department.

McInerney said Allain also had a penchant for random, haphazard violence--the sort that killed Amber, who police said was not an intended target as she stood in a group of other children.

Allain “at the very least, had information about the shooting that killed Amber,” said Sheriff’s Det. Chris Brackpool.

“Are we 100% positive it’s him? Not quite,” said Sheriff’s Det. Jim Gates. “But are we looking . . . very hard” at him? “Certainly.”

Detectives said that the investigation will continue to focus more tightly on Allain and on the search for a second unidentified person seen in the white Mercedes when the shooting occurred.

Thalia Laskey, Amber’s grandmother and guardian for much of the girl’s life, said she was torn by the disclosure.

“We realize there may be more information coming, but this is the first time we have heard anything like the police solving the case,” she said. “I still won’t feel good if this is the guy who did it though, because I want to face that person and ask, ‘Why did you shoot my baby?’ ”

The uncertainty will be put on hold tonight when the choir, which has gained a reputation as one of Southern California’s finest, holds a free concert at 6 p.m. at the First Church of God, 9550 S. Crenshaw Blvd. in Inglewood. Donations to the concert, to be performed in Amber’s memory, will be put in a scholarship fund that the choir started after her death.

“It will be seriously difficult,” said choir member Trevor Barnes Jr., who knew Amber since the two were in grade school. “But we will make it through. When we sing now we think about her, all of us. We hear a soprano part that she would sing and that triggers it.”

The group, which last year won first place in the McDonald’s Gospelfest, a gathering of Southern California church choirs, meets every Monday night in a little South-Central chapel. Since the shooting there have been moments at rehearsal when members were too distraught to sing. Instead they would cry and laugh and reminisce.

“We’ve leaned on one another, coming together in a way I never thought possible,” said choir member Alexis Barnes, 17, one of a group of Amber’s friends that has taken to regularly stopping by Thalia Laskey’s humble, pink home. The children hang out, offering encouragement to Thalia, known by the choir as “mother Laskey.” Sometimes they bring breakfasts of bacon, eggs and grits.

Amber was one of the children who had planned tonight’s concert as a holiday celebration.

“That’s part of what made her special,” said Jeffrey Coprich, founder and director of the 7-year-old choir. Coprich is no stranger to tragedy, having in the last four years lost another choir member and his godmother to gunfire, his daughter and niece in a traffic accident and a cousin in a fire that consumed a converted garage.

“She brought us all together and encouraged us when we were down,” Coprich said. “She was a worker, the kid who helped you get organized.”

It was Amber who organized a special tribute to Coprich, presented to him during the annual Watts Image Awards, which he has staged in South-Central Los Angeles since the 1992 riots.

It was Amber who got the choir to sing at a May candlelight memorial for drive-by shooting victim Lori Gonzales, the granddaughter of LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, a girl Amber had never met.

It was Amber who delighted in the moments she stood in the middle of the choir, dressed in a teal and cream gown embroidered with the words “L.A. Inner City,” singing her favorite hymn:

Hold up the light, hold up the light

All ye heaven-bound soldiers, let your light shine ‘round the world

The world is so full of darkness we have to be the light.

Tonight the hymn will be sung once again.