Boy’s Joy Ride Blamed on Another Tragedy

Depression after witnessing the death of his grandmother led a 9-year-old Gardena boy to take his father’s car for a ride that ended in a 100-m.p.h. police chase and the death of another driver, the boy’s father said Friday.

In an interview at the family’s home, Reed Wilson, 43, said his son Shawn was in the room with his grandmother at her Mesa, Ariz., home when she died in December after a long and difficult struggle with cancer.

“He’s been under a great deal of pressure lately,” Wilson said. “He saw her die. He was in the room when she just sort of slipped away. . . . He was very close to her. He loved her a great deal.”

Since his grandmother’s death, Wilson said, the boy had been “terribly depressed. Every once in a while he’d be in a funk, just staring into space. I’d ask, ‘What’s the matter?’ and he’d say, ‘I miss Grandma,’ or ‘I wish Grandma were here.’ ”

The accident occurred at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday when the fourth-grader took his father’s 1972 Buick from the family’s rented one-bedroom home on Harvard Boulevard in Gardena. Wilson said he kept the car keys in a dresser drawer in his bedroom and did not hear his son take them or the car, which was parked in front of the house. He said he did not drive the car because it was not insured.

After leaving his parents’ house, Gardena police said, the boy drove to nearby Denker Avenue and 154th Place, where he hit four parked cars and a house before leading police on a three-mile chase at speeds up to 100 m.p.h.

The chase ended at Normandie Avenue and Imperial Highway when the boy’s car struck broadside a car driven by Bobby N. Colvin, 36, of Los Angeles. Colvin, a mechanic and father of four, died at the scene.

Police pulled the boy from the car as it burst into flames. He was hospitalized with a fractured left leg and minor injuries but was released Thursday into the custody of his parents. The family has no medical insurance and may be forced to file for bankruptcy, Wilson said.

Gardena police will refer the case to the district attorney’s office for consideration of vehicular manslaughter, evading arrest and felony reckless driving charges, police said.

Wilson, a truck driver, and his wife of 22 years, Carol, 41, said they had never allowed their son behind the wheel of a car.

“Except for bumper cars and go-carts, Shawn had never even driven a car before,” Wilson said. “I don’t know how he did it. . . . I know he didn’t intend for this to happen. . . .”

Wilson said his family was grieving for Sharon Haddock, the mother of three of Colvin’s children, and for his son by a previous marriage.

“I want them to know how sorry we are for them,” Wilson said. “It’s going to be in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives.”