Los Angeles

‘That's When He Shot Me: Boom Boom Boom!': Survivor Describes Night of Shooting

Don Ervin survived the night of the shooting. His friend, 52-year-old Marcus McClendon, did not.

Donahue Ervin recalls the day in August when he was shot twice in the legs and a bullet grazed his arm.

"And that's when he shot me: boom boom boom!" he said. "I don't do anything to anybody! I'm 73 years old, I haven't had a fight since I was 13 years old!"

It was just before midnight on August 17, 2015, the month the Los Angeles Police Department South Bureau marked as one of the deadliest Los Angeles history.

"It's a sad state on what was going on here at that time," said Det. John Jamison of the LAPD South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Division.

Jamison said the department knew about the so-called "100 days, 100 nights" rumor on the streets South LA, but that was supposed to be all gang-related, and the group that had gathered this night were all adults in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

"These people weren't engaged in any high-risk behavior, they weren't engaged in anything that would lead them to be involved in this type of incident," Jamison said.

Don Ervin survived that night. His friend, 52-year-old Marcus McClendon, did not.

"It's been in my mind ever since he got killed. It was heartbreaking," said Catherine Mazzucco, Marcus' mother. She lives only three blocks from that corner on Harvard and 65th Place.

"I was walking and praying asking the Lord to save him," she said. "And when I got there, he was laying on his back, he was bleeding out."

Marcus' younger sister, Georgianne McClendon, remembers the phone call that night.

"I could see him, laying there, and I couldn't believe it. Not Marcus, no, I can't believe it and I just let out a loud yell and I threw my phone," she said.

They call him a gentle giant, the neighborhood handyman -- Marcus' mom said he took particularly good care of the elderly in his neighborhood.

"Do whatever he could for them," Mazzucco said.

And he was about to marry Keisha Pittman.

"He was everything," Pittman said. "We had a lot to do, we had a lifetime to live."

The family knows South LA has a reputation for unsolved murders. A year after Marcus was gunned down and Don Ervin nearly killed, they still question why.

"When you take something that's not yours, you can't give it back," Mazzucco said. "And that's a life."

"Everybody loved him. He had a lot of friends," Georgianne McClendon said.

"It makes me wonder whoever did this, do he know what he did?" Pittman said.

"They just killin' people at random and that's a breakdown of civilization," Donahue Ervin said.

A $50,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of the killer -- but it's also a reward for the family, to help them finally understand why they lost who they lost.

"They don't have no clue what they're doing to the families that they harm when they take someone's life," Georgianne McClendon said. "They just don't know what they do."

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