Insult Led to Killing of Two, Police Say

Sexual remarks made to a female clerk led to the argument that ended with a South Los Angeles store owner allegedly shooting to death two young black men who frequented his store, police said Tuesday.

“It started with an insult,” said Los Angeles Police Det. Frank Weber, who was investigating the Sunday night shooting.

One of the victims was William Armistead, 23, whose family said he had gone to the store for the Middleton Black & Mild cigars he smoked.

The other was Courtney Whaley, 17, who had a cold and went to the shop for apple and orange juice, according to his family.

Store owner Rovidio “Ruben” Espana, 31, a Guatemalan immigrant living in Baldwin Park, was charged Tuesday with two counts of murder. He was also charged with being a felon in possession of a handgun. He was convicted in 1994 of auto theft, according the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Espana has pleaded not guilty. He was being held on $4-million bail.

The shooting took place at the Super Discount store in the 6700 block of South San Pedro Street. Police said they recovered a revolver at the store that they believe was used in the shooting.

Residents say the South Los Angeles neighborhood has seen racial tension over the last few years. Large fights erupted at nearby Jefferson High School earlier this year between black and Latino students.

Police, however, said race had nothing to do with the shooting at Super Discount.

“Someone just got angry,” said Los Angeles Police Det. Rich Arciniega, an investigator in the case, “and it went from a verbal dispute to, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ ”

Police said Armistead and Whaley, who were friends, arrived separately at the store shortly before 9 p.m., with Armistead apparently arriving first.

Investigators said Armistead made an off-color comment to the female store clerk, whose identity has not been released. Police would not detail what was said.

“All I can tell you,” Weber said, “is that [Armistead and Whaley] were together during the innuendo and insults” to the clerk. The insults led to an argument with Espana, who was cooking carne asada with his family at the store.

Weber said the two young men left the store for a time and then returned. By then, he said, Espana had armed himself with a pistol and shot them. Neither Armistead nor Whaley was armed, police said.

Armistead was shot and fell inside the store, police said. He was later declared dead at California Hospital Medical Center.

Although police said Whaley was shot inside the store, family members have said witnesses told them he was outside the store when he was shot. Whaley staggered to the street, where a friend saw him and drove him to Whaley’s mother’s house, five blocks away. He died shortly after arriving at California Hospital Medical Center.

“I can see a lot of people placed in that situation and saying, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ ” Weber said of Espana. “I think it’s tragic on both sides.”

Families of the victims said they were well known around the neighborhood and shopped frequently at Espana’s store.

Family said Armistead, known by his childhood nickname “D,” had just gotten a job in construction.

“My boyfriend got him a job teaching him how to make money and be responsible,” said his sister, Lacresia Armistead.

“Everybody knew him. He’s a nice person. He wasn’t from any kind of gang. He would work on people’s bikes.”

Espana’s wife, Lorena, said the couple married 12 years ago. They’d earned their living for nine years running discount stores in South Los Angeles, she said. They’d moved to their current store three years ago from a smaller location at 108th and San Pedro streets.

“We got along with blacks as well as Mexicans. Race didn’t matter to us,” said Lorena Espana, who was not in the store at the time of the shooting. “For him to do what he did, he must have felt pressured in some way by the victims.”

Lorena Espana said black gangs in the area had been visiting the couple, pressuring them to pay protection money. The couple had resisted, she said, but the visits made her husband skittish, which may have contributed to the shooting.

She said, however, that neither Armistead nor Whaley had ever pressured the couple for anything.

Police confirmed that the Espanas had told detectives that black gangs had been threatening them, but they could not corroborate those claims.

Latino street gangs are known to exact protection money from drug dealers, as well as from legitimate businesses. In 2004, the city filed an injunction against the 38th Street, a Latino gang, in part for extorting protection money from merchants at the Alameda Swap Meet.

“I haven’t heard of black gangs doing it,” Arciniega said.

Courtney Whaley’s family Tuesday remained stunned by his death.

He’d left home with money for juice, said his sister, Ladesha Whaley.

That same money fell from his pants, she said, as paramedics worked on the bullet holes in his chest outside his mother’s house 20 minutes later.

“I want to ask [Espana] why he shot my brother,” she said. “That’s all I want to know.”