Surge In Gang Violence Leads To Sharp Increase In Murders

LA May Become Homicide Capitol By Year's End

POSTED: 5:50 p.m. PST November 22, 2002
UPDATED: 6:27 p.m. PST November 22, 2002

LOS ANGELES -- Pictures of Robert Williams' 17-year-old son sit on the kitchen table of his tidy home in South Los Angeles.

In some of them, Ernie Williams is a smiling baby, a skinny 5-year-old in glasses and bow tie, a chubby player on youth football and basketball teams. Still others show a slender, handsome teen embracing friends at his junior high school graduation.

Those more recent photos are among the last ones Robert Williams has of his son.

The teenager was gunned down by gang members on his way to a neighborhood store Tuesday night, becoming one of the latest victims in an alarming wave of murders that has put Los Angeles on track to finish out the year with the highest death toll in America.

"I always preached to him to stay away from trouble. Stay away from trouble, stay away. If you stay away you'll be all right," his father said. "Trouble just found him."

Friends and neighbors said Williams, a high school senior and computer whiz, had no connections to gangs, regularly attended church with his father and did chores in the neighborhood.