Twelve-year-old saves grandmother from robber
March 30, 1999
© 1999 Associated Press
by Robert Jablon
COMPTON, Calif. (AP) - A 12-year-old boy protecting his grandmother shot and killed a
16-year-old during a holdup at the woman's convenience store.
Police believe the killing was justified, but prosecutors will make the final decision
about whether to charge the boy, whose name was not released.
Neighbors and friends said both boys were basically good kids whose lives intersected
tragically in a poor, gang-ridden city of mostly blacks and Hispanics living in small,
ragged bungalows with bars on the windows.
The teen, Dennis Smith, was a high school dropout who wrote song lyrics but was taking
classes to obtain a diploma so he could go on to college. However, police said he had at
least two arrests for robbery.
He had tried for months to get a job, said a friend, Alicia Torres, 20.
"I guess it's just, hey, desperation. Obviously, you know he wanted money because he
was robbing the store. I mean, he wouldn't go in there to get no damn Pampers,'' she said.
But as for the shooting, "I would have shot him, too.''
The 99 Cents Plus Mini Market, owned by the younger boy's grandmother, sits on a shabby
block of storefronts 18 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It was robbed twice in
February.
Around noon on Sunday, police said, two teen-agers entered the market. One put a machine
pistol to the head of the 62-year-old owner, but another employee managed to knock it away
and began struggling with the youth. The other robber, the 16-year-old, began to beat the
owner.
The woman's grandson grabbed a handgun kept in the store and fired, Lt. Michael Sneed
said. The 16-year-old was shot several times and died at a hospital.
The other robber fled, but investigators had several leads and expected to arrest him by
Friday, Sneed said.
The grandmother had only minor bruises. The 12-year-old was allowed to go home to his
grandmother.
He lives with her and two sisters in a small duplex. His father is in Mexico. Neighbors
said he often was seen playing with other kids in the narrow strip of concrete and grass
under the clothesline between apartments because the park nearby is too dangerous.
The grandmother, originally from Durango, Mexico, worked hard at the store seven days a
week, and the boy helped out on weekends, said Juan Zamora, 51, who makes leather goods in
a shop next door.
"Always they have troubles because everybody try to steal,'' he said. "The
police come very late. They come after one hour, after three hours, after four hours.
Everybody is still afraid. Nobody protects us.''
