The Shooting That Didn’t Kill Westwood
The 1988 Murder of Karen Toshima Was Not the Beginning of the End for One L.A. Neighborhood. But It Did Focus the Entire City on the Problem of Gang Violence.
Last year Los Angeles magazine published a list of the “Eight Crimes that Changed L.A.” The names and monikers of the killers and victims composed a grim roll call: The Black Dahlia, Charles Manson, Sharon Tate, The Night Stalker, Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy, The Hillside Strangler. One name, however, was anomalous because of its utter anonymity: Durrell DeWitt Collins.
Twenty-six years ago Collins, a Rolling 60s gang member from South-Central Los Angeles, was strolling down Broxton Avenue in Westwood when he fired two shots at a rival Mansfield Hustler Crip. One …
