Frustrated Community Denounces Slaying of Girl

Family, friends, clergy and police came together in South-Central Los Angeles on Wednesday to vent frustration over escalating violence and announce a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person who killed Amber Laskey, a 16-year-old gospel choir member slain in front of her home in a recent drive-by shooting.

On the evening of Sept. 5, Amber and other youngsters were taking photographs in her frontyard in the 1900 block of West 112th Street. About 7:45 p.m. a white 1998 Mercedes-Benz with tinted windows and chrome rims drove past the house and someone inside the car opened fire, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

Amber was hit in the head, falling at her front door as the car sped off.

“One minute she’s there, enjoying herself, the next she’s gone,” her grandmother, Thalia Laskey, recalled at the news conference, held at the New Christian Fellowship Church. “She fell and she didn’t move.”

In a stern message meant for the killer, Thalia Laskey announced: “You didn’t just take a person’s life. You took someone who stood for something. She was the type of person to tell people what was right and what was wrong.”

Thalia Laskey and others described Amber as an outspoken leader among her peers, a precocious teenager who started a Bible study and mentored children. She was a leader in the L.A. Inner City Mass Choir, a group of about 80 youths that has gained a regional reputation for highly charged performances and work in the community. When Lori Gonzalez, the granddaughter of LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in May, Amber helped organize a candlelight memorial in her honor, though the two had never met.

Parks’ wife, Bobbie Parks, was among the speakers paying tribute to Amber on Wednesday.

About half a dozen people took to the podium, which held a photo of Amber smiling in a baby-blue blouse, taken for a recent choir fund-raiser. At one point the speakers were surrounded by clergy and police officers and members of her choir. The speakers called for an end to violence, particularly the surge in shootings and homicides that has plagued South-Central recently.

Among the most vocal was George Washington Senior High School Principal Margueritte Lamotte, who said that her school has not been able to operate normally this year because students are so worried about safety.

Anyone with information on the Amber Laskey case is asked to call the Sheriff’s Department at (323) 890-5500.