Mourners Recall Gun Victim as a Peacekeeper : Funeral: Lamar Sintay Stewart is eulogized for opposing gang violence. He was fatally shot while trying to break up a fight.

Lamar Sintay Stewart died trying to keep the peace.

Nine days before Christmas, police say, the 23-year-old was shot to death in the 1000 block of East 49th Place when he tried to intercede between two young men who were squabbling over a girl. At his funeral Monday at St. John Baptist Church, Stewart was remembered as a martyr--a former gang member who had spent the last year of his life preaching peace to his homeboys.

“This brother walked the streets,” said Khalid Shah, president of Stop the Violence-Increase the Peace Foundation, an Inglewood-based group with whom Stewart had been working at the time of his death. Shah motioned toward a gray, metal coffin topped with red roses. “He died doing the right thing.”

Shah announced at the crowded funeral service that his foundation is seeking to raise a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Stewart’s killer. Last month, the foundation put up a similar reward after three Pasadena schoolchildren were ambushed and killed on Halloween night. The police arrested three suspects last week.

“We’re not taking it anymore. We have to take a stand,” said Shah, who was accompanied by actress Carol Brown of TV’s “Days of Our Lives” and Lynn (Red) Williams, who is known as Sabre on the show “American Gladiators.” Shah held Stewart up as a role model for other youngsters who want to leave the gang life behind. “He came from that lifestyle and . . . (became) a soldier for the cause of right.”

*

Detective J.D. Furr of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division said that at 7:15 p.m. Dec. 16, Stewart was fixing his car on East 49th Place near Central Avenue when two male acquaintances began fighting. Stewart stepped between them, and one of the men left. Minutes later, that man returned with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and shot Stewart several times, Furr said.

“They were arguing over a girl and (Stewart) came out and was trying to break up the fight and the suspect hauled out a gun and shot him,” Furr said, adding that there are indications that the suspect has left California, possibly on his way to Mississippi. Furr said investigators do not believe the shooting was gang-related.

Shah said when Stewart was killed, he was preparing to go to a forum to discuss sexism and violence in rap lyrics.

“But we won’t see Lamar on Arsenio Hall . . . or on the cover of Time or Newsweek. We’ll see Snoop Doggy Dogg,” he said, noting the recent publicity about the Long Beach rapper who is charged in the murder of a man allegedly shot by his bodyguard.

No one claimed that Stewart was an angel. Court records indicate he had gotten into trouble with narcotics as recently as May. But Shah said he was on the right track.

“If Lamar had been with us a couple of more years or so, he would have been in the situation where he would have been going back to college and doing some other positive things,” Shah said. “Lamar had a good streak in him. And that says something. It says these young people are not a lost generation. We can’t write them off.”

*

Monday’s funeral service drew dozens of mourners, including several tearful young men who wore T-shirts embroidered with the words, “In Loving Memory of My Homie, Mista Lamar.” Rich Dorsey, 22, who lived near Stewart for seven years, said the handsome young man with the big smile was “a real giving person, real kind. Everybody loved him.” Another young man comforted a friend who was overcome with grief. “He’s just our homey,” the man said. “We love him. That’s it.”

Omar Abdul Ahkim, Stewart’s cousin, was one of several people who rose to address the congregation.

“It is a sad situation when life in our community counts for nothing,” said Ahkim, who praised Stewart for being an arbitrator of peace. “God is looking from on high, and he’s not pleased with what he sees in the black community. . . . We cannot die for neighborhoods that do not belong to us. It’s madness. It don’t make no sense.”

As Stewart’s grandmother and great-grandmother wept quietly, a young woman rose to read a poem. “You know and I know that life is hard on Earth,” she said. “So we shouldn’t cry at death--only at birth.”