Family Struggles Year After Attack

The thick scars on 3-year-old Kennedy Durden’s forehead and right forearm remind her family of their beloved Ishmail.

Kennedy was wounded a year ago on the night her 8-year-old brother, Ishmail, was shot and killed at their grandfather’s home in South Los Angeles. Two gunmen sprayed the home with bullets that tore through the living room, also injuring another brother and a cousin, in what police called a gang-related attack.

Besides coping with Ishmail’s death -- photographs of him remain on display throughout the family’s new home -- the family over the last year has watched Kennedy struggle to use her injured arm and 14-year-old Floyd turn to a cane to help him walk because of his shattered left hip. Their cousin, Ben Jones, 58, was hit in the spine and head, and often complains of numbness and headaches, relatives said.

Last summer, two suspects who lived only blocks from where the shooting occurred at West 60th Street and Menlo Avenue were arrested and charged with murder and three counts of attempted murder. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 3.

“They have ruined a lot of lives,” the children’s mother, Beverly Johnson, 40, said in an interview last week. “Not just our lives, but their own lives, their parents’ lives.”

Johnson says that she sometimes forgets Ishmail is gone. She called for him one morning, and Floyd came to her. “Ishmail’s not here,” he said.

The boys’ brother, Aaron, 18, won’t sit near the family photos in the living room for too long. The pictures bring him to tears, his mother said.

As Johnson, a nursing student, spoke, her husband, Kenneth Durden, remained silent. The father, a stucco painter, and his youngest son used to spend several days a week at a gym boxing.

Johnson keeps a wooden chest filled with Ishmail’s things, including his boxing gloves and the shoes he wore the night he died. She placed his pillowcase in a plastic bag to preserve his scent.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about” that night, Johnson said. “Sometimes I feel like it was my fault; I feel guilty.”

She can’t help but think of whatever small thing she could have done to prevent her children from getting hurt, like sending Ishmail to bed. He was asleep on the floor.

“We were just watching TV, and these bullets just come flying through the house,” she said, crying. “And I thought [the children] were all OK because they were already on the floor, but they weren’t.”

It was about half past midnight when the bullets stopped. The television had been knocked out, and there was silence.

“Ishmail was laying straight down,” Johnson said. She thought he had slept through the barrage. “He never woke up. He was asleep, and he never opened his eyes again. He just slipped away.... I just knew he wasn’t going to make it because he was so little and those were big bullets.”

Aaron Johnson was in the bedroom at his grandfather’s home that night, out of harm’s way. He has admitted in the past that he once had gang ties, but police would not say whether he was the target of the shooting.

The suspects remain in jail as they await trial. Jose Noe Valdez, 18, is being held on $3-million bail and Karl Ellis Smith, 20, is being held on $5-million bail, authorities said.

During a jail interview, Valdez said he was wrongly accused and should not be in jail. “I haven’t even lived my life,” he said. “I’m not even 20 yet.” Valdez said he was at home the night of the shooting.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

Police said they had evidence and statements by both suspects connecting them to the shootings.

“We are confident that the individuals arrested in this case are responsible for this crime, but we are not going to comment on the specifics of the case in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation,” LAPD Det. Greg Stearns said.

On Thursday, Valdez’s sisters cried in a courtroom as they looked at their brother, who was held in a glassed-in area reserved for prisoners. He was there for just a few minutes to hear his next court date, but it was worth the family’s time for just a glimpse of him.

“He never got involved with nobody,” said his sister, Martha Vega, 29. “He’s my brother, and he has never been a gangbanger.”

“They’re stereotyping him into being something he’s not,” said his brother, Gustavo Valdez, 14. “To them [the police], if you are black or Hispanic and you live in South-Central, you gotta be a gangbanger.”

Valdez, the father of three children, sends pencil drawings of Disney characters to his mother, Magdalena Lopez.

Lopez said she had lost weight and developed diabetes as a result of her son’s troubles. Every night, she said, she prays for hours in the kitchen for her son to come home and for God to take care of him.

“Sometimes I don’t eat,” Lopez said in tears. “I can’t sleep, because I can’t take him being there. I never thought anything like this would happen to me, because my kids are good; they never had any trouble with the police.”

She burns candles on her kitchen windowsill and prays for her son.

Johnson said she understood the pain of missing a son all too well. On what would have been Ishmail’s ninth birthday in October, his family went to his grave and burned a candle in his memory.

But Johnson said she couldn’t just mourn for Ishmail. She also must help her other children recover.

Floyd, who walks with a pronounced limp, has been told by doctors that he needed lifts to help him walk more comfortably. When he gets older, he might need hip replacement surgery. Kennedy, 3, suffered severe damage to her arm, including shredded muscles, and cannot put pressure on her hand.

The family moved in May to a house on a hill elsewhere in Los Angeles.

“I can’t go over there anymore,” Beverly Johnson said. “It’s too many memories.”