Man, 85, Receives Probation in Slaying of Neighbor

An 85-year-old man was placed on 10 years’ probation Friday and ordered to live with his daughter in Chicago after being convicted of fatally shooting a neighbor, who he claimed continually harassed him.

Christopher Peterson, a retired waiter, was sentenced by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan, who had convicted him last April, after a non-jury trial, of second-degree murder in the shooting of Norma Jewel Mitchell, 48.

Tynan, who reduced the verdict to voluntary manslaughter, also imposed a 120-day jail sentence, but Peterson was released from custody, because of credit he received for time served.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn, who appeared in court Friday, asked the judge to send Peterson to prison, as the probation officer had recommended. Conn was reluctant to comment on Tynan’s decision, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Keith Schwartz, the original prosecutor in the case, said the defendant “should have been committed, whether to state prison or to a locked facility so he’s not free to come and go.”

However, Peterson’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Randall A. Megee, said his client had nearly died in jail because “he can’t eat jail food.” Megee said Peterson is legally blind, partially senile and suffers from failing kidneys and liver problems.

Mitchell was killed July 30, 1984, while she was sitting on the front steps of her apartment building in the 2700 block of South Normandie Avenue, near downtown Los Angeles. In a statement to police soon after the shooting, Peterson said he had become angry at Mitchell when she tried to block his access to the building as he was returning home from a trip to the supermarket.

“I told that woman she’d better not be there when I come back,” the defendant said in his statement, adding that he went to his apartment to retrieve a handgun that he always kept loaded. When he saw Mitchell sitting on the steps, he said, he hit her on the head with the weapon and then fired twice.

“I meant to shoot that woman, because she made me mad,” he said in the statement.

‘Unprovoked Violence’

In her probation report urging a prison term, Deputy Probation Officer Doris Feldman said Peterson has “apparently reached a stage of his life where he can no longer tolerate any frustration and, as he has demonstrated in this murder, will react with unreasoning and unprovoked violence.”

However, Bob E. Bales, correctional administrator at the California Institution for Men at Chino, where Peterson was sent for 90 days’ observation, said in a letter to Tynan that the defendant could be “adequately supervised on probation,” as long as he was required to live in a board-and-care facility.

“If a live-in board-and-care placement cannot be arranged, a state prison commitment would then become necessary . . .,” Bales added.

Megee said, however, that placing Peterson in the custody of his daughter was equivalent to putting him in a board-and-care facility.