Recalling How a Night of Joy Turned Tragic

Chloe Baker sits on the ledge of the car’s window, as if riding in a parade.

This is a rare night, one to be heard and seen and felt close up. So she sits on the passenger side, half inside the car, half outside, watching people along Crenshaw Boulevard as they wave their flags and toot their horns and shout their love for the hometown team.

They are happy about the Lakers’ championship victory, but Baker has other good things to be happy about. She has a family who adores her, including a 2-year-old son who is sleeping in the back seat. She is a smart college student and she is pretty. She has good friends, a red car and a closet full of shoes. She has just turned 18.

The car inches along the crowded boulevard on this June night, one the city will long remember.

Minutes before midnight, as the car nears the intersection of Crenshaw and 48th Street, a gunman fires, killing Baker and wounding another person in the car.

So begins the saddest coda to the Lakers’ victory song. On the night Los Angeles wrapped itself in joy, one family met unspeakable grief. While city officials condemned the destruction of property in the downtown area, and the Lakers offered to replace ruined police cars, Baker’s family planned her funeral.

“Whoever did this to her, she did not deserve it,” said her grandmother Alice Daniels.

At St. Brigid Catholic Church, several hundred people remembered Baker on Saturday as a mother, student and worker who was determined to achieve her goals--for herself and for her son, Rick. The funeral was attended by scores of young people who listened as speakers urged them to walk a positive path that includes education.

“In tribute to Chloe’s life, you can continue to better yourselves, your family and your community,” said Joyce Germaine, an educator who spoke at the service.

Baker’s death is a reminder that there is no logic to the when and where of violence. Like shootings at churches and schoolyards, a death in the midst of celebration seems to carry a particular cruelty.

Baker’s death is believed to be the only killing in Los Angeles related to the Lakers’ victory celebration. In Huntington Park, Miguel Duran, 25, was killed while celebrating at Gage Avenue and Pacific Boulevard. No arrests have been made in either case.

Police investigating Baker’s death say the killing was intentional. “This was not the proverbial bullet going in the air and coming back down,” said LAPD Det. Brent Josephson.

For Baker’s family, one night 12 years in the making for a basketball team will forever mark a tragic end to the short life of a well-loved young woman.

“I’d bought a Laker flag to celebrate,” said Christina Foley, Baker’s aunt. “I can’t put it up. Now when I think about the Lakers, I’m thinking about Chloe.”

‘We Love You; We Miss You’

Inside the family’s Crenshaw-area home, where Baker lived with her grandparents and other relatives, photos of her hang on the walls. One has been placed in the living room, another on the door of her brother Camron’s bedroom. A photo on the mirror above his basketball trophies bears this inscription: “R.I.P, we love you. We miss you. Love, your big brother.”

The siblings were a year apart. In family photos, they can be seen growing up together. She is in ponytails and ribbons; he looks the part of the big brother. Last year, they went to the after-prom party together. Baker wore red, her brother wore red and black. Last year, they graduated together from Crenshaw High School.

Baker’s son has seen his mother’s face on the walls, and pointed to her on TV as stations broadcast news of her death and the search for her killers. “See? See? Chloe!” he said.

Baker and her son greeted each other the same way every day: “Hi Papi,” she would say. “Hi Papi,” he answered back.

“We’re going to keep her memory alive and let Rick know his mommy didn’t abandon him; somebody took his mommy away from him,” Foley said. As he spoke, Rick played nearby with a cousin. Baker’s mother, Sheila Foley, was also nearby, too hurt to talk.

The family is left now with loss and curiosity about what Baker would have been like at age 21 or at 30--her sassy, determined spirit all matured and grown.

“She made 18 on the 18th of May,” Daniels said, sitting at a dining room table. “She was looking forward to her 18th; that meant she could do what she couldn’t do when she was 17. . . . The girl lived only days, really, from her 18th birthday.”

Baker’s family had seen her succeed. She learned to sew and made clothes for herself. She learned to type and studied piano. She saved her money for a car and showed up at her house one day in a Ford Taurus. It was not exactly a jewel. It didn’t matter, it was hers.

“I’d say it was a bucket,” Foley recalled, smiling at the memory.

“We just had to shake our heads,” Daniels said. “This girl said she was going to buy one. Little did we know she was going to go get one.” Baker painted the car, added rims, seat covers and a radio.

When she became pregnant, she continued with her schooling and ended up earning enough credits to graduate early.

She attended El Camino College and talked about becoming a doctor after working as a receptionist at a medical clinic. The family teased her. “Boy, we don’t want her to be our doctor, because if you didn’t do what she said, she might slap you,” Daniels said.

“I really do believe,” she said, her voice sobering, “she could have done anything she wished to do. . . . Chloe was something else.”

The day of the shooting, Baker returned from her job as a cashier at Smart & Final and took a nap. Afterward, she told her grandmother she and the baby were going to a friend’s house in Inglewood to watch the game. That night, Daniels also watched the game. After the Lakers won, she began watching the time.

“The clock said five minutes to 12,” Daniels recalled. “I said, ‘They’re not here. This is ridiculous.’ I said, ‘I’m going to give her a few more minutes, and I’m going to call her on her cell phone.’ ”

Then Camron Baker came running from his room and told her, “ ‘Come on, we’ve got to go. Chloe’s been shot,’ ” she recalled.

Tragedy Is Compounded

Baker was shot about a mile and a half from the family home. The driver of the car drove her and another passenger, a young man who was shot in the stomach, to Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood. Baker was pronounced dead from gunshot injuries to the neck and back. The young man, who was not identified, is recovering.

Later, Baker’s grandfather arrived at the hospital and found his family by the sound of their crying. “The doctor said she died instantly,” Daniels said.

As the city held its victory parade for the Lakers and discussed the outbreaks of violence, Baker’s family still had not even seen her body.

The hospital released the body to the county coroner’s office, which sends bodies to a mortuary where the family is able to view it. But the coroner’s office has been overloaded. For Baker’s family it meant a long wait for viewing and burial--a time during which they secretly hoped the girl in the morgue was not theirs.

“How do you explain to a family that they cannot have their child for six or seven days?” asked Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the coroner’s office. “That’s really a traumatic time, yet our staffing prohibits us from releasing a body right away.”

Finally, on Tuesday, a week after her death, the family was able to see Baker’s body.

The killing has shaken the Crenshaw neighborhood where Baker lived. On the Friday after her death, Crenshaw High had its graduation. During the ceremony, the Class of 2000, “The Sculptors,” clapped and cried when a counselor remembered Baker from the stage.

Crenshaw High teenagers have visited the family, bringing their good memories, their tears, even the tassels from their graduation caps. At 48th and Crenshaw they created a sidewalk memorial of flowers, stuffed animals, cards and letters in English and in Spanish.

Others have come by to visit the family as well--friends, neighbors, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, his wife and daughter Felicia Parks-Mena. Parks-Mena’s daughter, Lori Gonzalez, was shot to death May 28 as she and a companion prepared to drive away from a fast-food restaurant at La Brea Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard. Gonzalez was just shy of her 21st birthday.

On three occasions members of the Parks family have visited Baker’s relatives.

“It was like they were part of our family,” Foley said. “They were down to earth and expressed their sympathy as if it was their own family member that it happened to again.”

The family has also received a call of condolence from a representative of the Lakers.

‘This Is Not God’s Way’

At the funeral, held in the same church where Chloe sang in the youth choir, rows and rows of teenage girls and sober-faced young men wrestled with grief. Some wore white ribbons bearing her name. They comforted each other with hugs. They held on to their parents as they passed the coffin bearing their friend. Baker was buried in an outfit of ivory and lavender with silver butterfly barrettes in her hair.

The Rev. Charles Andrus spoke of a lack of respect for life that plagues the city and called upon young people to have the courage to tell one another, “This is not God’s way.”

“Try a little harder,” he told the youths, “to stay in God’s presence, not in the presence of evil. . . . Try a little harder to know there is a spiritual life, not just a physical life.”

Last week, local activists held news conferences citing the recent string of shooting deaths in South Los Angeles. They repeated a call for city officials to convene an emergency summit on the violence.

Last week a City Council member agreed to hold a preliminary meeting on Thursday.

The weekend after Baker’s shooting, police passed out thousands of fliers on Crenshaw Boulevard, hoping someone would come forward with information.

On a night when the streets were so crowded, somebody must have seen something, the family said.

“The community is scared to say anything when they know something,” Foley said. “We need to stop being afraid. . . . We want Chloe’s murderer found. . . . Everybody should have that right to go out and party without being gunned down.”

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Det. Brent Josephson or Det. Lorenzo Barbosa of the Southwest Homicide Unit at (213) 485-2415. After hours and holidays: (213) 485-2504 or (213) 485-2505.