$1,000 Offered in Bus Shootings : Officer Hopes Reward Stirs Anti-Gang Unity

A young Los Angeles police officer who said he hopes to encourage residents of South Los Angeles to “band together” against street gang attacks offered a $1,000 reward Friday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the unidentified teen-age gang member who wounded four people on a packed RTD bus Thursday.

Carl McGill, who is assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division, which is investigating the bus attack, said he obtained financial commitments from seven Southside businessmen. He said he solicited the pledges not as a policeman but as a private citizen and organizer of a gang-awareness program that sponsors meetings for parents.

McGill said he is trying to emulate Westwood Village’s response to the Jan. 30 shooting death of Karen Toshima, 27, who was caught in the middle of street gang gunfire shortly after leaving a Westwood restaurant with a friend. Westwood offered a $10,000 reward for information about the killer. A suspect, a 21-year-old gang member, was soon arrested.

Police detectives Friday said they were preparing a composite drawing of the bus shooting suspect from witnesses’ descriptions and will take it to high schools near the site of the attack in an effort to see whether the suspect can be identified by students or people who spend time around the campuses.

Police said the gunman, a passenger on a bus, rose from his seat, pulled a .45-caliber handgun from his waistband and began spraying shots after two rival gang members confronted him. The incident occurred at 3:45 p.m. when the bus was near 60th Street and Vermont Avenue.

The gunman was described as between 15 and 18 with closely cropped hair. He apparently had had a previous run-in with the two rival gang members who confronted him, police said.

Two John Muir Junior High School students, Lamont Adams, 15, and James Ballard, 14, who had boarded the bus two blocks earlier on their way home from school, were wounded in the groin and leg, respectively. In addition, Dennis Darby, 21, was shot in the leg, and Ernest Banks, 15, was wounded in the chest.

Ballard was treated at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and released Thursday. Darby was discharged Friday. Banks and Adams remained in the hospital Friday in stable condition.

Because some of those involved in the incident remained sedated in the hospital, police Friday were still uncertain about some details. They said it was not clear whether the gang members who initiated the confrontation were among the four who were wounded.

Police said witnesses told them that Darby and Banks were already on the bus when the gunman boarded it at Vermont and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. There was no immediate confrontation at that point. However, by the time junior high students boarded the bus at Vermont and 59th, passengers were being challenged about whether they were gang members. Precisely who was making that challenge remained unclear, police said.

In another section of the Southside about five hours after the bus incident, four teen-age gang members with a rifle shot and killed a young man who may have failed to follow his friends, who ran away when they saw the group coming down an alley.

Wounds Are Fatal

Marcel Watts, 19, was chatting with a girl and boy in a parking lot behind an apartment building at 10617 S. San Pedro St. when his friends noticed the four gang members, who police said ranged in age from 13 to 18. One of the assailants had a .30-caliber rifle. He fired twice. Paramedics who found Watts in the alley took him to the King medical center, where he died shortly afterward.

The killers had not been identified or arrested by late Friday.

The RTD shooting took place minutes after most of the nearby junior high’s students had left. But those students who remained, as well as their parents, said it reinforced their feelings of powerlessness.

Sylvia Thorton, whose 13-year-old son attends John Muir, said she is considering pulling the boy out of school and hiring a tutor for him at home.

“This could have been stopped years ago,” she said. “This time it was on the bus. But it’s happened at the school before.”

Robert Johnson, 14, an 8th-grader, said rival gangs vying for preeminence inside the campus have threatened and intimidated students who want to remain on the sidelines.

“The gang problems are not as bad as other schools, but it’s pretty bad,” he said.

Bryan Levels, 18, who attends Manual Arts High School, said after a lifetime in South Los Angeles people become inured to the violence. “If you just moved here, you’d be scared. . . . But if you live here, you get used to it.”

Muir Principal Earline Edwards said school officials have kept the gang situation in check. She said students are forbidden to wear gang colors on campus.

‘Children Feel Safe’

“We’re in a community with gangs, but we don’t have a gang problem per se. Our children feel safe. Our teachers feel safe.”

The frightening circumstances of the bus shooting prompted Officer McGill to offer the reward. He had spent the last several days trying to raise money from Southside businessmen with an eye toward offering money for information that helped authorities solve any gang-related crime.

McGill said the $10,000 reward offered by a group of Westwood Village businessmen for information about the Toshima shooting illustrated the kind of solidarity he feels has been lacking in South Los Angeles.

“That reward showed a community unifying in response to someone having the audacity to come in and attack,” McGill said. “What I’m trying to do is convince the South-Central Los Angeles business community to show the same intent, that we’re going to stop it.

“Hopefully, this will be an example and give incentive to other types of rewards by the community.”

“I think the police need some help,” said one Slauson Avenue business owner, who said he donated $400 to the reward fund but asked his business not be identified for fear of possible retaliation by gang members. “Nobody’s reporting a lot of stuff that they see.”

Added another donor, Dr. Charles Greene: “We do not support crime; we support crime-busting. In this respect we want to show that we are as much citizens of the neighborhood as anybody else.”

Lt. Joseph T. Freia, a detective supervisor at the 77th Division station, called the effort “a nice gesture” but said he doubted it would help encourage gang members to turn their fellow members in.

“Especially with so many gangs involved in narcotics sales, a thousand dollars ain’t no big thing,” Freia said.

More than 50 people were killed in gang-related incidents during the first six weeks of the year in Los Angeles County. If that pace continues, it would result in more than 450 deaths, far beyond the 1987 total of 387, a county record.

Reacting to such statistics, the Los Angeles County supervisors voted earlier this week to provide $1.5 million in emergency funds for the Sheriff’s Department’s anti-gang program and to place more deputies on patrol.

Some law enforcement authorities have predicted that the number of victims will increase because gang members are increasingly using guns. Last month, 89 gang crimes involved the use of guns. In January, 1987, 58 crimes involved guns. In 1986, guns were used in 520 crimes. In 1987, that figure jumped to 858--a 65% increase.

Times staff writer Ted Rohrlich contributed to this story.