Questions for the LAPD in Death of a ‘Perfect Son’

It has been four years since Marc Fitzsimmons was shot to death by two policemen on a dark corner of South-Central L.A., but to his mother, it could have been last night.

Every detail of the incident is as clear in the memory of Donna Dymally as if it had just occurred. Part of the reason is the thick stack of documents she fidgets with in the South Normandie home her family has occupied for 50 years.

As we sit in her dining room surrounded by the dolls she makes and collects as a hobby, she offers the documents one by one, selecting them automatically from the file: police reports and follow-up investigations, the coroner’s conclusion, court filings, newspaper and magazine stories and the report of a private investigator.

All chronicle the death of Dymally’s “perfect son” who, at age 28, was brought down by police bullets after he allegedly assaulted an elderly woman with a meat cleaver and then charged the officers while brandishing the same weapon.

“Not my son,” Dymally says to me, emphatically shaking her head. “He was a wonderful man. He never had a record or used drugs. He graduated from Fairfax High at 15 and was a gifted child.”

She holds up a photograph of him. It’s a handsome, open face, hiding nothing, an eager face, on the brink of the future--and the face of another young African American killed by police.

“They had the wrong man,” Dymally says, staring at the picture as though she might bring him to life again. “He wouldn’t have done that.”

Clearing her son’s name has become her life’s work. On the day we met, she talked about him at an anti-police rally at the street corner where Fitzsimmons was killed on July 2, 1998. She has been involved in protests against police brutality and at one time had filed a suit against the Los Angeles Police Department, which she dropped for lack of witnesses.

Dymally is divorced from Mark Dymally, son of Mervyn Dymally, the former lieutenant governor and congressman. A schoolteacher and community activist, she once served as a member of then-Mayor Richard Riordan’s Neighborhood Initiative Project.

All of her passion on this warm summer afternoon is directed toward telling the story of her son. The videotaped police assault of 16-year-old Donovan Jackson is in the news this day, in an incident that has fired Dymally’s anger and memory as she talks about Fitzsimmons.

“On July 2nd, 1998,” she says, staring me straight in the face, “my son left home to go to the Bank of America to get his sister some spending money for a trip she was taking to Cleveland, Ohio. Little did we know that we would never see him again.”

What happened, according to voluminous police reports, was that two officers responded to the call of a woman being attacked by a man with a meat cleaver. The woman wasn’t seriously injured. Searching the area, the officers came upon Fitzsimmons, who was allegedly identified as the attacker by witnesses at the scene.

A police report chronicles the final moments of the young man’s life in precise, almost distant terms: “Fitzsimmons ultimately stopped, turned to his right in a clockwise direction, and faced in an easterly direction.” “The armed suspect began to sprint in an easterly direction toward Officer [Daniel] Russell.” “Officer Russell, in fear of his life ... fired one round in a westerly direction.” “Officer [Malcolm] Thomas, in fear for Officer Russell’s life ... fired one round in a northwesterly direction

Dymally challenges every aspect of the killing, including the time, the location and accounts of witnesses. The man they were looking for was described as older and larger than her son, she says, and wore different clothing, and at the time of the attack on the woman, her son was several blocks away.

She resents that she was never notified by police of his death, but rather heard of it five days later from her parents in Ohio, whom police had notified. Fitzsimmons, who had lived in Ohio up until the previous year, carried a driver’s license from that state.

“He had eight pieces of Los Angeles identification on him too,” she says, in obvious anguish. “Why wasn’t I notified?” She pauses, hurting. “They wouldn’t even let me identify him before he was cremated. I never had a chance to say goodbye.”

A local organization called the Power Pack Center for Social and Economic Justice investigated and accused the LAPD of a cover-up. A report was sent to then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, but, Dymally says, her office never responded.

Police documents are thick with justification for the killing of Fitzsimmons. The officers were certain they got the right man. Dymally is just as certain that they didn’t. She swears that one day she will prove that her son, her perfect son, was innocent.

It would do little good for me to debate the veracity of any of the claims. But the accusations of Dymally thicken the dark clouds already hovering over Southern California’s law enforcement community, and the issue cries out for another look. A last review by a neutral source might finally lay to rest questions involving Fitzsimmons’ fading moments on Earth and ease the anguish of survivors.

Although the record shows that his death occurred four years ago, to his mother it will always be just last night.

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Al Martinez’s columns appear Mondays and Thursdays. He’s at al. martinez@latimes.com.