No End to Murder’s Grief

A year ago Thursday, on a warm summer evening in Compton, Kevin Blanchard was murdered.

There was nothing especially noteworthy about the killing. Kevin, 19, fit a typical profile of homicide victims in Los Angeles County. The young black man’s death came and went, and his name was added to the list of nearly 15,000 slain in the last decade.

Events of this week, though, tell another story -- that of an explosion that ripped through a community after the bullet hit, and has reverberated since.

As the day marking Kevin’s murder drew near, members of his family braced themselves for what they called “the anniversary,” a modern ritual, like sidewalk memorials and candlelight vigils, that has grown around urban homicide. August has become the peak time for such anniversaries in Los Angeles County.

With Kevin’s approaching, his mother, Patricia, listlessly made plans and changed them, discussed prayer vigils and poetry readings. Nothing seemed adequate.

Her plans still in flux, she rose the morning of Kevin’s death and felt a familiar shock.

It was as if no time had passed. “My body felt the same weakness, everything. Just like it was,” she said, “Just like on that day a year ago.”

Kevin DeShawn Blanchard was shot in the head as he drove down a residential street on the west side of Compton.

He careened into a garage. Neighbors heard him try to restart his car. Then there was silence.

The killing was like many in Compton: It seemed to make no sense. The shooter was probably involved with gangs, detectives said. Maybe the killer thought Kevin was someone else.

Awkward as a Child

Kevin was good with his hands and didn’t talk much. He had an embarrassed manner, and would hold a hand over his mouth when he laughed to cover a crooked tooth.

As a child, he had been chubby. He collected baseball cards and comic books as soon as he could read. In his teenage years, he seemed to grow tall and lanky overnight.

By 19, he was a handsome youth, with prominent arching black brows, always groomed, his shirts matching his shoes, his hair styled. His friends teased him, calling him “Pretty Boy.”

Kevin’s confidence was slow to catch up. He was ever hanging back, letting others hold the stage. When he went to clubs with his girlfriend, Angel Beazer, he would lounge along the wall, refusing to dance.

He had been attending community college, and was thinking of becoming a police officer.

His mother had just got him a white 1999 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and he was proud of his new rims.

The night Kevin died, he was driving the new car to pick up Angel.

He was late. Angel couldn’t understand why Kevin did not respond to her phone messages. By midnight, she was frantic. At least five of her high school classmates had been murdered.

“Kevin, I am not mad. I am not going to holler at you. Now I’m just worried. Please call,” she pleaded into his voicemail.

Single Mother of 5 Children

Kevin’s mother is a single parent of five from Missouri, with broad features and straight, graying hair.

Her own parents did not finish high school. But Patricia Blanchard returned to school at age 48 to earn her nursing degree. She works at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, treating many young victims of gunshots.

She prodded her children to follow her example. “No one can take your knowledge away,” she would tell them.

At age 61, she could proudly claim that four of her children had gone to college. One had earned a master’s degree.

On this night last year, she got a phone call while watching TV.

From the caller’s voice, Blanchard knew something was wrong.

Worry is constant for black mothers raising sons in Compton. Every morning, Blanchard prayed for their safety. “You are a young black man,” she would tell Kevin. “You have to be careful.”

The caller said Kevin had been shot. The paramedics were taking him to King/Drew. Blanchard dropped the phone without hanging up, and ran out, forgetting her purse.

At the hospital, she couldn’t get answers.

She tried to sit, but paced the halls instead. Nearby, she could see the double doors to the trauma bay. Whenever a doctor passed in or out, she strained to get a glimpse.

At one point, a gurney came rolling down the hall. Blanchard stepped aside to let it by and saw it carried a naked baby.

The infant had been shot. A short while later, she heard a woman screaming. Blanchard had worked at King/Drew long enough to know what that meant: a mother being told of her child’s death.

Shortly after, a doctor she knew came into the waiting room.

Four Patients in 30 Minutes

A surgeon from Ethiopia, Dr. Gudata Hinika is compact and bespectacled, with an elegant accent and a warm personality. Blanchard used to call him “Dr. Sunshine.”

Ethiopia’s murder rate is a fraction of Compton’s, and Hinika did his training in a suburban U.S. hospital where gunshot wounds are all but unknown.

But at King/Drew, his first patient eight years ago was a 19-year-old woman shot in the chest. He couldn’t save her. “I was just destroyed,” Hinika recalled.

After a few years at King/Drew, the shock went away, but he remained uncomprehending. “I could not imagine a civilized country where anyone would do damage to this extent,” he said.

On the night of Aug. 7, 2002, four gunshot victims had come into the trauma bay within 30 minutes. Among them were the 2-month-old baby and a young man with no identification.

The young man had a bullet wound to the head, and no vital signs. Hinika noticed only that he was tall and handsome.

He had no time to spare. Another patient arrived with a bullet in the chest, and he spent two hours in surgery.

Hinika emerged, and learned the infant had died. He went to tell the infant’s mother, and stood by as she screamed.

The nurses told Hinika that he needed to make his second death notification of the night. They pointed to where another woman waited.

He walked in the room, saw Blanchard, and halted in confusion.

“I couldn’t speak for a moment,” he remembered.

Blanchard, he said, is one of the nurses he most respects, among the kindest on the staff.

“What are you doing down here Ms. Blanchard?” he asked, but the realization was already dawning.

The young man must have been her son.

Painful Task of Identification

Blanchard was sitting with a hospital chaplain, Roderick West, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Montserrat and a longtime friend.

Like Hinika, West was astonished by the violence in Compton.

He has seen its toll among his neighbors and to the children to whom he ministers; one boy in his after-school program saw his father murdered.

West watched Hinika comfort Blanchard. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he recalled him saying.

Blanchard had a tissue in her hands. She began wringing it, rubbing her hands together.

West remembered her asking Hinika, “What are you saying? What are you saying?” Hinika remained steady: “Ms. Blanchard, your son did not have any sign of life when they brought him to us.”

Blanchard slid down slowly in her chair toward the floor. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,” she said. West and the nurses lifted her back up into her seat.

Kevin had been identified by his tattoos, but one of the nurses pulled West aside: They needed someone to identify him officially. West walked into the curtained bay to see Kevin’s body.

The light was dim. Kevin was covered up to his neck. West saw a tube in Kevin’s mouth, and a hole in his head, near his ear. One eye was taped over, one still open.

West felt a sense of failure sweep over him.

Kevin was near the age of one of his own sons, West said. He felt paternal toward him, protective. He looked at Kevin’s open eye, and thought, I failed to protect him.

A short while later, the nurses asked Blanchard if she wanted to see Kevin. Blanchard said no, began to cry, stood up to leave, sat down again, then walked toward Kevin’s bedside, West at her side.

As she walked, West saw her slowly sinking toward the floor. He and a nurse struggled to hold her up.

At the bedside, Blanchard tried to throw herself over Kevin’s body, and they held her back. She stroked Kevin’s arm. “You are so cold, so cold, so cold,” she said.

Kevin’s arm, folded across his body, fell loosely at his side. Blanchard picked it up, and carefully replaced it.

She looked at the bullet hole. She was a nurse and had seen many such wounds. It must have been a small caliber at a close distance, she recalled thinking.

Blanchard’s mind went to Mary in the Bible. This is how she must have felt, Blanchard thought, watching her son nailed to a cross.

A Feeling of Helplessness

The next day, Hinika walked into his boss’ office.

“I want to quit working with trauma patients,” he told trauma director Jean-Claude Henry. “I am trained to treat victims of accidents, not homicide.”

His frustration had been building. “I have no understanding of why things go on like this in a civilized world,” Hinika said. “Even war is temporary. But this kind of situation ... it’s become a way of life.”

The deaths Hinika sees are disproportionately the result of black-on-black homicide. It has baffled him, he said, and as an Ethiopian, he knows that neither race, nor skin color, nor African origin can explain it.

“A gang mentality is a problem anywhere,” he said. “Wherever you have testosterone and young men, this mentality exists. But the amount of power they have here! The lawlessness! “

He shook his head.

“It’s just way bigger than we are,” he said. “There ought to be a bigger solution. The government ought to be spending more energy and time.... I’d like to be part of a bigger picture, but I don’t see that.”

Henry talked him out of quitting. He had done this before. Burnout is common among King/Drew trauma surgeons.

Hinika said he would not stay much longer.

“I feel so sad and overwhelmed that I cannot provide a cure,” he said. “The helplessness just kills me.”

Seven Deaths on One Street

B.J. Jones, 18, Kevin’s childhood friend from the neighborhood of tract homes where the Blanchards live, was told of Kevin’s death while he was visiting the University of Washington. Jones had just received a basketball scholarship there.

Kevin had been his constant companion. The two boys would play basketball, argue and make up. He grieved alone that day in a university dorm room.

Quiet, lanky and fine-boned, B.J. already knew something of murder. His half brother, Kareem Omar Jones, was murdered on Aug. 26, 1996. And he had neighbors who had been killed.

In all, the families on the Blanchards’ street in Compton had lost six sons to violence. Kevin was the seventh to die.

B.J.’s father is Bobby Jones, 47, a laborer. He said Kevin’s death made him think of Kareem’s, and of all the murders of black men and boys like Kevin going back to his childhood in Texas.

Jones recalled black neighbors imagining, with some bitterness, what white people must be saying: “Let them kill themselves off. One less to worry about.”

Down the street, another neighbor, Ruth Evans, has lost two sons to homicide: Winston, 25, in 1986, and Delano, 36, in 1992.

Sometimes, she said, she feels the world has made war on its black sons.

“I grieve for our children,” she said. “I hate to see little babies and think what they face in this world.”

Church Filled for Funeral

Kevin’s funeral was in a large, white-walled church in Compton, filled with people. Kevin’s family sat in front, and behind them rows and rows of Kevin’s friends -- many wearing T-shirts with his picture.

His pallbearers, young black men his age, sat on one side, shoulder to shoulder.

One had an arm up on the backrest of a pew. His fist closed and opened. A second bent over, hiding his face in his knees. A third rocked. A fourth jiggled. A fifth was stone-faced except for one movement. He was clenching his jaw.

Compton Mayor Eric Perrodin spoke from the pulpit. “Black men need to step up to the plate,” he said. “You gotta take Kevin’s death and you gotta change.”

But midway through this speech, he faltered, making a helpless gesture. “I feel like it’s getting kind of old,” he said wearily. “I’ve heard this for 45 years.”

Surprise Visitor Takes Pulpit

The funeral was interrupted by a surprise visit.

The Rev. R. Jerome Fisher had just presided over a funeral service across the street for a murdered 17-year-old boy. He had walked over to Kevin’s funeral to ask for a moment at the pulpit.

Fisher ordered every man in the church under 35 to stand up. There was a rustling in the pews. Dozens of young men stood, uncertainly, then started to sit again. Fisher ordered them to remain standing.

I want to say something to you, said the gray-haired minister.

“I am black history,” he began. “You are looking at a man who lived when black men couldn’t vote. I will leave here soon, and I want to say this to you: You don’t know how important you are.... If there is to be another strong generation, it will have to come through you.”

All around the church, young men were standing. Some listened with blank faces. Some chewed their lips, or slouched against the wall with hands in their pockets. Others looked troubled, with furrowed brows. Their eyes followed the pastor’s every move.

“You have the responsibility to build your generation or destroy it. The choice is yours,” Fisher said.

There was applause. People sat.

One tall, skinny teenage boy in the middle of the church remained standing for a moment, slowly clapping.

Mourners Brought to Tears

The church service ended with a slide show. Even the small children fell silent to watch faded Kodachrome images of Kevin’s life: There he was in a pirate costume, in a Little League uniform. Kevin’s school pictures. Kevin at the prom.

The pallbearers, the young men who had stiffly controlled their tears throughout the service, were now crying.

One was bent over with his shoulders shaking. Another drew an arm across his face. A friend sitting next to him was squeezing the bridge of his nose.

After the service, mourners filed past Kevin’s open casket.

A thin youth approached the coffin with his arms folded. He looked at Kevin, and his lips twitched. For a second, he started to cry.

But he quickly controlled himself, and moved away, yanking the brim of his baseball cap down hard over his forehead.

Another youth sauntered to the coffin, a toothpick in his mouth. When he saw Kevin, his brow knitted, his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched in anger.

Kevin’s killer was never caught. The family heard a rumor that he had attended the funeral, slipping in back to watch.

Shortly after, Kevin’s older sister Jacquelyn Woods said she dreamed that a giant arrow had been spray-painted across the streets and buildings of Compton.

The arrow pointed straight to Kevin’s killer.

Woods is an accountant who had moved her own sons, Chet, 22, and Chris, 16, out of Compton to Moreno Valley to keep them safe.

But two months after Kevin’s death, her son Chet was shot in Riverside as he sat in a car at a stoplight. Bullets hit both of his legs. He recovered.

But his mother felt buffeted, helpless. “It’s like you can’t run far enough,” she said.

A Secret Is Revealed

Not long after the murder, Kevin’s girlfriend, Angel, had come to Blanchard with a revelation.

Earlier in the summer, Angel, then 18, had learned she was pregnant. Kevin was scared, and Angel was unsure what to do. Kevin died not having told his mother.

A few weeks after Angel confessed this to Blanchard, tests showed the child was a boy. Angel went straight from the clinic to tell Blanchard, who laughed and cried.

Angel sat by looking happy. But a moment later, her glow vanished.

On the one hand, the child will give her “a part of Kevin,” she said. “But then, there will always be this constant reminder.” Then she stopped, looking tired, troubled, older.

The year wore on. Blanchard kept yellow ribbons tied on the trees in front of the house for months after Kevin’s murder.

For a few weeks, she hung a banner: “The Sixth Commandment, Thou Shall Not Kill.”

Blanchard went back to work at the hospital, flinching whenever she heard a code yellow -- another shooting. Another Kevin. She resolutely celebrated the holidays, decorating her lawn, as always, like the North Pole.

She continued treating young men shot in gang fights.

Kevin and Angel’s child, Kevin DeShawn Blanchard II, was born March 23.

“I am afraid to really get attached to him because of Kevin,” Blanchard said. “I am afraid it will just happen again.”

Anniversary Preparations

A few days before the anniversary of Kevin’s death, Blanchard sat in her living room, making preparations.

Angel came over, with little Kevin. She talked of how she must someday tell the baby about his father, but doesn’t know what she will say.

B.J. Jones, filled out and back from his first year of college, stopped by. He had kept Kevin’s picture up in his dorm room all year.

Blanchard has lost touch with many of Kevin’s young friends. They talked about how another friend had been killed sometime after Kevin’s funeral.

West has left Compton. Blanchard tells the group about Dr. Hinika, who has moved from trauma to general surgery, and who recently asked her for a copy of Kevin’s picture.

On anniversary day, Blanchard bought flowers. She unfurled her banner once again, and sat outside her home.

Evans, the neighbor who has lost two sons, came over. Kevin’s childhood friends stopped by. Woods arrived with her sons Chet and Chris, her new foster children and the rest of the family.

They gathered together flowers, balloons, poems and books of eulogies. As evening closed in, they drove to Inglewood Park Cemetery. They stood in a circle at the grave site to pray. By then, the poems and readings were forgotten.

Kevin’s sisters sank to the ground. Chet froze, his face a mask. Chris drifted off by himself, then bent double, gripping his head in both hands.

Blanchard stumbled forward toward her son’s marker, her face slack with pain. “Oh Jesus,” she breathed and started to sob.

They remained this way, wordless.

The wind picked up. Flocks of blackbirds landed and took off. No one moved. Five, 10, 15 minutes went by.

At last, Woods slowly rose, Chet dropped an arm over his grandmother, and together they walked to their cars.

*

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

This is one in a series of occasional stories about murder in Los Angeles. To read previous stories and see graphics and a photo gallery, go to www.latimes.com/mortalwounds.