Safe in War, Sailor Slain at L.A. Club

He was a sailor on leave from duty in the Persian Gulf, out for a night on the town with a high school buddy and the buddy’s girlfriend.

They ended up at a Southwest Los Angeles nightclub that is a hangout for one of the city’s street gangs. A few minutes before midnight Monday, both men were gunned down with a rifle as they stood in the parking lot of a strip joint called Charlie’s.

And as police investigated the killings, what seemed almost certain was that neither man knew he was on dangerous ground until it was too late.

The petty officer, Brian Keith Butler Jr. of Gardena, and his friend, Melvin Deonte Knowles of Lakewood, both 25, were killed near 9th and Florence avenues in Hyde Park. Police Det. Rudy Lemos of the 77th Street Division described them as “clean, good, all-American kids” who had been friends since high school.

“They weren’t from here,” he said. “They didn’t know the area.”

Butler, he added bitterly, “was probably safer in the Middle East than he was here.”

As detectives reconstructed the killings, the men left Charlie’s because Knowles’ girlfriend was uncomfortable with the club scene. The woman, who was not hurt, had already gotten into the car and was waiting for them. But as they lingered briefly outside the vehicle, a gunman walked up and fired at least 30 shots, then fled in a red sport utility vehicle carrying other passengers.

On Tuesday, neighbors and relatives on his block in Gardena remembered Butler as a hero who joined the Navy to see the world. He returned from a tour of duty on a destroyer based in Bahrain earlier this month and was scheduled to ship out again in June from New Orleans.

“We were so elated when he came home and was on safe ground,” said his aunt, Desdra Butler. “Little did we know he would be a victim of the streets of Los Angeles. He’d gone around the world and come back home safely. But he could not go 10 minutes away from home in Los Angeles.”

Knowles was doing contract construction work while trying to break into the real estate business and raising two sons by himself, a friend said.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Shane Yarbrough, a Palo Alto firefighter who introduced the two men while they were in high school. “I never thought they’d fall to gunfire and violence. We never got into trouble.”

In the neighborhood where the shootings took place, 77-year-old Herman Billups said the gunfire was “so loud I thought someone was at my door.”

He said he looked out his window and saw one man lying in the street and another crouched against a wall.

Billups said he and his son found six shell casings on his driveway and lawn Tuesday morning. Bloodstains were in the street and next to the white building where one of the men had sought cover.

Desdra Butler described a close-knit family in which her nephew represented the third generation to serve in the military. She said members of her family listened to daily news reports about the war in Iraq and worried about Brian.

“When they go overseas in the military, you know they’re going into a danger zone, so you prepare for what could happen, but you pray it doesn’t happen,” she said. “So when he came home, there was a sigh of relief, only to find out that the streets of Los Angeles are more dangerous than the streets of Iraq.”

She said the family had planned a large gathering in two weeks to celebrate Butler’s birthday before he shipped out to New Orleans.

“It was going to be a birthday send-off,” she said.

One of the neighbors, Shyra Tellez, 17, said Butler always stood out in the neighborhood -- the first to get a job and the first to get a car.

“Out of all the teenagers on this block, he was the most responsible one,” she said, tears welling up. “I just saw him walking the dog yesterday, teaching it to jump and speak.”

Kelvin Knowles said his brother Melvin usually played dominoes on Monday nights, but there was no game, so he and Butler decided to visit a club, accompanied by the girlfriend.

“I believe they just weren’t thinking,” he said. “Our mother raised us kind of straight, so this is very unusual.”

Kelvin Knowles described his brother as a “big guy with a teddy bear heart. He was always interested in everybody having a good time. He was always spending time with his kids, taking them to church and taking them to school.”

Melvin Knowles was raising his two boys, Romeo, 7, and Sebastian, 6.

Kelvin Knowles said he had prayed that the killer would turn himself in.

“We have so much evil in the world,” he said. “It’s just sad. We just have to trust that the Lord is working things out.”