venice

Murderers on the Run, While Family Grieves in South LA

It was chaos the night 40-year-old Roger Lamontre Moore was killed outside his Hyde Park home.

"No family should have to go through this," his elderly mother Ruby says. "No family."

For more than Lamontre's life, as he was called, the family lived in their same, quaint home.

Lamontre was a maintenance man for LAUSD at Venice High. But just days after the Fourth of July in 2013, Lamontre’s life was cut short when bullets broke the festive air.

"He was standing out there talking," his father Lee "Jack" Moore remembers, "When the guy came up from around the corner and started shooting.”

The night of the shooting, some people in the neighborhood got together for a block party. It was just ending when everyone was starting to scatter. Detectives say Lamontre arrived home, parked his car and went to speak to neighbors on the sidewalk; his back to the two men who approached.

"He never saw it coming," says Ricardo Feria, a detective with the LAPD South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Division. "It was right before midnight when two individuals approached from that direction."

Police say one of those men fired the fatal shots. Lamontre collapsed in a neighbor’s driveway.

"We just want justice for him," his mother says. "He can’t speak for himself so I have to speak for him."

Lamontre may have been an adult, but to his parents, he was still just a boy — their only child.

Detectives say they have tried — and so far been unsuccessful — in trying to get witnesses to come forward.

"There was 50, 60 people congregating out here, enjoying a Saturday night," Feria says. "We have not been able to reach all of them."

With so many eyes that night, Lamontre’s family questions why so many are afraid to come forward.

"It’s never too late," his mother says. "It’s not going to bring him back but at least I know they’re not on the street."

LAPD is asking anyone with information to call them — even anonymously — at 323-786-5100.

"Maybe they might have heard something, seen something. It's never too late to come forward."
 

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