March planned against rash of deadly violence in Watts

Congregants from 27 churches and leaders of the Watts Gang Task Force are expected to converge Saturday for a demonstration decrying a wave of violence that has taken the lives of six men.

Michael Scott, 29, was in his Watts apartment the morning of March 13 when intruders shot him several times. Scott -- a father of five, according to acquaintances -- was the sixth man shot and killed in and around the Nickerson Gardens public housing development since late November. The violence comes after a period of relative calm in the deeply impoverished community.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, demonstrators are scheduled to depart from the Wrecking Crew for Christ Holiness Church Trauma Center, 11250 Avalon Blvd.

Their first stop will be Nickerson Gardens, said Carl Lee, a minister, where demonstrators will attempt to join hands and encircle the housing development.

“We’re trying to unify the community,” Lee said. “People say: ‘Oh, well, it’s just gang members.’ What about the people who aren’t gang members? They’re scared to come outside. They’re scared to let their kids play outside.”

Police believe the violence is linked to a civil war of sorts that has erupted within the Bounty Hunters, the dominant gang in Nickerson Gardens, apparently over drug sales.

Capt. Phillip Tingirides of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Community Police Station said Scott’s killing appears to be connected peripherally to the others. No arrests have been made, and police have been frustrated by residents’ hesitancy to cooperate.

“We feel very confident that there are witnesses. . . . The community is in fear of retaliation,” Tingirides said. “We can’t get people to come forward.”

Investigators, however, have managed to make an arrest in a 3-year-old attempted murder case. The suspect in that case, whose identity has not yet been released, is a “person of interest” in one or more of the recent killings, Tingirides said.

“It’s kind of a volcano that’s ready to erupt,” he said of the Nickerson Gardens violence. “And one of the key points of eruption we have in custody.”

scott.gold@latimes.com