Dispatch: "I don't want to go"

At the hospital, they told Karen Wayland to wait in the chapel.

That's when she knew.

Earlier she had gotten a phone call. But the caller said only that her son, 18-year-old Jayvon, had been shot.

She rushed to the scene. Officers sent her to the hospital. She went. She asked to see him.

They showed her the chapel. She balked at the door. "I don't want to go," she protested. "I know what that is!"

They coaxed her in. They closed the door.

Wayland could hardly breathe. Finally, the doctors and police came. She knew what was coming. She nearly passed out anyway.

Afterward she would remember one phrase from the conversation: Jayvon, she recalled them saying, "didn't have a drop of blood left in his body" by the time he arrived at the hospital.

Jayvon Brister died of gunshot injury at 8:57 p.m. Monday, July 30. He had been attacked at Century Boulevard and Denver Avenue just west of the Harbor Freeway while riding a bicycle.

He had attended Locke High School but didn't graduate. He was aiming instead for a technical certificate. He had taken some classes in mechanics at Compton Community College.

He was a natural fix-it man, constantly tinkering with the car, the microwave, his stereos, the TV, his family said. "He was always fixing up something I didn't want him touching," his grandmother said.  Police suspect gang motives in the shooting, but it remains unsolved.

(Above, Wayland tries to put her son's broken glasses back together before the funeral. Above left, the bicycle shrine where he died. "I just want everyone into that gang stuff to know they need to leave that alone," she said. "Them bullets ain't got nobody's name on them." )

Comments

[Valeria Hughes]

I have been in California, Los Angeles for 40 years and alway thought that Century and Denker was West of the Harbor freeway. Live and learn

[O'Dawg]

Century and Denker is almost 2 miles west of the Harbor Freeway. Century and DENVER, where the murder occurred, is between Hoover and Figueroa about 1/2 mile West of the Harbor Freeway.

I was driving on Figueroa that night and was going to make a left on Century when I saw the street was blocked off. I made a mental note to check this blog to see if there would be any information. I was saddened to see there was.

[Denise Golden]

There is no value on human life anymore and people have lost the ability not only to communicate and love but to just to plain co-exist. I lost my brother in May 2005...some fool...yeah fool...shot him right between the eyes over some straight up male nonsense...I for one will never completely get over the shock...the ripping of my soul...the pain of loss...the are 10 million whys and hows and none of them can be really answered because murder has no answers...the picture of the police bringing my brother's body out will never, ever be erased not ever....I truly feel for the family of the victim....those left with all the questions....my heart is with you.....