Stray Bullet Claims Life of Watts Matriarch : Crime: 80-year-old ‘grandmother to neighborhood’ is shot while washing dishes. Her home, which was a place for everyone to gather, now is a place for mourning.

Everyone knew May Dunkentall. In fact, Dunkentall’s daughter, LucilleBritt, believes even the people who killed her 80-year-old mother may have known her.

“She knew all of these people in the area, from Alameda to Wilmington, from 92nd Street down,” Britt said. “She knew all these people who’ve been here in this yard.”

Those people knew they could come to Dunkentall’s Watts house to sit on her porch and sample her food. They knew her as “Gramps” or “Big Mamma,” the frequent hostess of birthday parties and neighborhood gatherings.

Now her home is a site for mourning. Family, friends and neighbors assembled outside the 107th Street residence Friday to grieve for Dunkentall, who was hit by a stray bullet from a passing vehicle as she washed dishes in her kitchen Thursday night. She died that evening at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Ron Page, a neighbor, said he rushed into the house when he heard the shots and found Dunkentall lying in a pool of blood by her refrigerator.

“Whoever is responsible, I hope they get their just rewards,” he said. “I hope they meet the same thing she did. I hope they meet pain and death the way she did.”

“She didn’t have to die like this,” said Susan Clark, who has lived near Dunkentall for three decades.

For 29 years, Dunkentall has been a fixture in the neighborhood. She brought up her daughter and two sons on a plantation in Shreveport, La., before moving the family to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s “to do better,” in Britt’s words.

“Everybody loved Mrs. Dunkentall,” Page said. “She’s a legend. She’s part of this community.”

“She was like a grandmother to me,” said Mike Johnson, 24. Indeed, many say Dunkentall, who took care of seven grandchildren of her own, was a grandmother to the whole neighborhood.

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She would sit on her porch and feed anyone who came by and wanted food, neighbors say. She would wake up in the mornings and begin cooking soul food, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Passersby would hail from the street: “Hey, Gramps!”

“This place was like a second home,” said Michael, a neighbor who would only give his first name. “She’d feed you. She might know you were on drugs, she wouldn’t give you money, but she’d feed you.”

Michael, 33, said he used to sell pots and pans when he was younger, and Dunkentall would always buy one. “She didn’t need them, but she’d buy them,” he said. “She was like that.”

But Dunkentall was also a no-nonsense woman, Britt said. “She was just down to earth. She didn’t pull any punches, she called a spade a spade,” she said. “That’s why the kids loved her.”

When Dunkentall thought someone had stepped out of line, she was sure to let them know. “She would sock all of us,” Britt said. “I’m 51 and she would hit me.

“She taught me to respect all grown-ups, be they white, black or brown,” she said.

Britt’s 22-year-old daughter, Denise, learned similar lessons. “She told me to stay out of trouble,” she said. “I’m just going to miss her. She was a good lady, a good grandma.”

Dunkentall never changed during her 29 years in Watts, her daughter says, but the neighborhood did. The streets became more dangerous. Stray bullets flew. One blinded Dunkentall’s youngest son, Virgil. Then, in 1977, Dunkentall’s other son, Charles, was killed by gunfire.

But Dunkentall “never thought about moving,” her daughter said. “She didn’t have any fear, OK, of stuff like this.”

“Every day there was someone here with her,” Britt said. But no one else was home Thursday night. The other resident, Dunkentall’s 22-year-old grandson Keith Dunkentall, was out when the shooting occurred. Britt said she did not know if the drivers had been after Keith. Police, who are continuing an investigation, said they have no suspects.

Now Britt is leaving the neighborhood her mother loved. She says she is taking her family back to Louisiana, where her mother will be buried. “I lost my mother, my brother, and my baby brother was shot and blinded,” Britt said.

And is she now worried for Keith Dunkentall?

“No,” Britt said, clutching a framed picture of her mother to her chest. “My worries stopped yesterday. I was always worried about my mother. God has her now, so I don’t have to worry anymore.”