Father’s Death Left Void in Life of Boy Killed by Police

On his last day of school, Devin Quincy Brown was called into the principal’s office.

The 13-year-old boy was frequently absent, wasn’t doing his work and was in danger of missing eighth-grade graduation.

Devin, a stocky boy not much more than 5 feet tall, was quick to crack a joke and got along easily with students and teachers at Audubon Middle School.

But too often he was in the hallways instead of class, said Michael Franklin, a campus aide who works in an after-school mentoring program.

After several informal talks, Franklin brought Devin to meet with the principal on Feb. 4, a Friday. They told him he had a serious choice to make.

“We’re going to help you direct your focus,” Franklin recalled telling the boy, “but you have to do your part.

“He said, ‘OK, Mr. Franklin.’ ”

Devin never got the chance.

Early on the following Sunday, Feb. 6, he was shot and killed by a Los Angeles police officer at 83rd Street and Western Avenue. Devin was behind the wheel of a stolen Toyota Camry that police said had backed into a patrol car after leading officers on a short chase.

His mother and immediate family have remained silent except for a statement last week expressing their grief. But friends, family members, classmates, counselors and neighbors have filled in some of Devin’s last two days.

Many questions remain unanswered: Where exactly was the officer standing when he fired at Devin? Did he overreact?

Did Devin’s mother believe her son was safely asleep at a friend’s house? What was Devin doing in a stolen car at 4 a.m.?

What is known is that Devin had seemed lost since his father’s death in January 2004, teachers and counselors said.

Charles Brown, who had worked as a cafeteria helper at a nearby school, died of heart failure. He was 56. Franklin, whose own father died when he was young, thought Devin’s problems were related.

The loss also put pressure on Devin’s mother, Evelyn Davis. When Devin was a fifth-grader, Davis had been an unofficial room mother at Western Elementary School, said David Bailey, Devin’s fifth-grade teacher. After her husband’s death, Davis took two jobs, said Albertine Escloven, Devin’s great aunt.

“His teacher said his mother looked tired,” said Torrence Brannon Reese, program director for the LA Bridges gang intervention program at Audubon. “When they get to be that age, they start hanging, and you can’t watch them all the time.”

Reese believed that Devin’s problems, and those of many boys his age, stem from the absence of a male role model. At Audubon, Reese said, about 80% of students have no father in the home.

He said Devin was a perfect candidate for intervention: “He was known for not being where he was supposed to be, for being in trouble, skipping classes.... His father is deceased and his mother is overworked and stressed out.”

Reese said he hoped to persuade Devin to join the 50 other students who filled their hours after school with tutoring, yoga, reading and discussions about self-esteem.

On Friday, Devin had confided in 14-year-old classmate Ilsy Hernandez. The eighth-grader said he told her that he was sad about his dad dying.

After-School Activities

Before Charles Brown’s death, a neighbor said that Brown would often spend afternoons with his son. For years, construction work had taken him away from home, but he had switched jobs, working at Mount Vernon Middle School.

Without his dad, Devin -- whose voice had deepened in recent months -- would look for ways to entertain himself after school, friends said.

Devin played sports, watched movies and roller-skated. His friend Shonneric Johnson, 14, said he and Devin would sometimes catch a ride or take the bus to the Fox Hills Mall, about five miles west in Culver City.

They would go to meet girls, Shonneric said with a grin.

Devin took a public bus from Audubon to his apartment near 54th Street and Western Avenue. Many residents had grown up in his neighborhood and their own children now house-hopped among friends’ homes.

That Friday after school, Devin played basketball with Shonneric and another teenage boy who friends say was a frequent companion and allegedly was with him at the time of the shooting. The night was ordinary, except that the one-bedroom apartment Devin shared with his mother and younger sister on Manhattan Place was being renovated.

A new owner, Catalina Cruz, was having the carpet replaced and updating the kitchen. The apartment also needed to be fumigated.

The family planned to sleep elsewhere that night. Cruz told Devin’s mother that they should be able to get back in the apartment by Saturday afternoon.

Cruz said she always saw Devin dressed in his school uniform, a neat white shirt and shorts. She said his mother seemed depressed over the death of her husband.

On Friday evening, after basketball, Devin went to Shonneric’s house, a regular hangout a couple of blocks away. In the living room of the duplex, neighborhood children made themselves at home in front of the TV.

They watched the movie “Any Given Sunday.” Devin, who had seen it many times, always laughed when the Jamie Foxx character sang, “My name is Willie Beamen and I keep the ladies screamin.’ ”

Devin spent Friday night at Shonneric’s, as he told his mother he was going to.

On Saturday, Davis, known to friends as Jeri, walked around in a football jersey, neighbors said.

Devin, whose mother had just let him start playing Pop Warner football, told his friends that he was going to watch the Super Bowl with her.

When Davis returned to her apartment about 6:30 p.m., Cruz told her the renovation work was going to take a few more hours. Come back around 9:30 or 10, Cruz told her. “We’ll just come back tomorrow,” Cruz recalled Davis as saying.

By then, Devin had gone over to his friend Sharyn’s house with the same teenage boy whom he had watched movies with the night before. The three were often together.

“We’d go get something to eat, or be kicking it like normal kids,” said Sharyn, 16, who asked that her last name not be used.

By 7 p.m., the two boys decided to go back to Shonneric’s house a few doors away, where Devin expected to spend the night.

Shonneric’s mother, Aarica Sanford, 32, was home but her son had gone to spend the night at an aunt’s house. Sanford welcomed the teens to watch a movie and eat popcorn. She said she often let neighborhood children spend time at her house. Once the movie was over, she shooed them out for awhile. She expected Devin to return later to sleep over.

As they were leaving, she remembered Devin and his friend saying, “If we don’t get no girls, we’ll be back in 20 minutes.”

About 9:30 that night, the pair were back to see Sharyn.

“We walked up to the store, Century Liquors, and bought some Pringles and soda,” she said. She shared the food with Devin but didn’t buy anything for the other boy because, she said, he was teasing her.

On the way back, they passed an apartment on West 54th Street. Tracy Smith, 13, who lives there, saw a patrol car drive by and shine a spotlight on Devin and his friends. She recalled that Devin was wearing a gray sweat suit.

The teenagers went into the courtyard of the three-story stucco building. Devin played outside, where the sounds of children playing tag and video games echoed off the concrete walls. His friend walked into the apartment of a young mother he knew and helped himself to pizza. When he was done, they went to Sharyn’s house.

“I stayed outside until like 10, talking on the phone, hanging out,” she said. “Then they took off.” It was the last time she saw Devin.

Someone told Sharyn that the two boys were planning to go to a party south on Western Avenue.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Sunday, a maroon four-door 1990 Toyota Camry parked in front of the apartment complex where the teens had been hanging out was reported stolen. The owner, a resident of the building, told police that he had last seen the car about 12:15 a.m. Half an hour later, he saw it was gone.

Chase Ends in Minutes

Los Angeles Police Department Officers Dana Grant, 29, and Steve Garcia, 31, were on patrol shortly before 4 a.m. when they saw the Toyota drive through a stoplight.

The Newton Division officers turned on their police car’s siren. At 3:49 a.m., Garcia radioed to say they were pursuing a possible drunk driver.

The chase was over in minutes. Trying to turn right from Western Avenue onto 83rd Street while going at least 40 mph, the driver lost control and skidded 102 feet to a stop just short of the steel fence in front of Tony’s Tire Shop and Auto Repair.

The passenger door opened and someone fled.

According to the LAPD, the Toyota began to move backward, striking a sign pole with its open passenger door. It traveled 21 feet until it hit the patrol car. Then the car drove backward an additional 18 feet, slamming shut the police car’s front passenger door and leaving traces of paint from the driver’s rearview mirror on the trunk of the patrol car.

The Toyota then drove forward nine feet, coming to rest alongside the police car.

At 3:53 a.m. two officers on the scene from the 77th Street Division called in the incident and, almost simultaneously, shots were fired. Three minutes later they called for an ambulance.

Police investigators said they found Devin Brown in the driver’s seat of the Toyota.

At some point after the Toyota began backing up to the patrol car, Garcia got out of the passenger seat and shot 10 times. According to a senior law enforcement official, Garcia shot at Devin through the Toyota’s passenger side windows. Garcia was first standing behind the open passenger door of his patrol car then moved away a short distance, the source said.

A 14-year-old boy was taken into custody at the scene and arrested on suspicion of auto theft. Prosecutors later said there was insufficient evidence to file charges.

Franklin, the man who last spoke to Devin in the principal’s office the Friday before his death, learned of the shooting the following Monday morning at school.

“I hear his voice in my mind,” Franklin said. “I hear him saying: ‘I plan to do better.’ ”

Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Daniel Hernandez, Natasha Lee, Jill Leovy, Solomon Moore, Tracy Weber, Erica Williams, Richard Winton and Nora Zamichow contributed to this report.