All-Star Shot to Death After Her Prom Night

It was supposed to be the night of her life.

In anticipation of her senior prom Friday night, Berlyn Cosman, a pretty, athletic 17-year-old at Crescenta Valley High School, had bought a green evening gown and gotten her long brown hair styled.

The all-star high school basketball player, her date and other friends took a limousine to the Hilton adjacent to Universal Studios and after dancing all night piled back in for a post-prom party at a hotel near Disneyland. There, she and a group of about 14 others rented three rooms, and there the fun--and Berlyn’s life--came to a tragic end.

Berlyn was shot once in the head as she slept on a hotel room couch about 6 a.m. Saturday, allegedly by Paul Michael Crowder, 19, a former student at the school who dated one of Berlyn’s teammates, authorities said.

Anaheim homicide detectives, uncertain of a motive, are piecing together details of the evening. The group had been drinking beer but no evidence of drugs was found. Hanging in the closet when police arrived at the sixth-floor room were prom dresses and rented tuxedos. Police say five other teens were in Room 608 of the Crown Royal Suites at the time of the shooting, but they are providing differing stories on what occurred.

“Of all the people there, we can’t seem to get a true story,� said Anaheim Police Sgt. Chet Barry, head of the homicide detail.

Paramedics took Berlyn to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, where she died at 12:40 a.m. Sunday. Authorities said Crowder, a former high school varsity football player, fled the scene on foot, called his mother to pick him up, and was arrested Saturday by Anaheim police at his La Crescenta home.

The weapon, thought to be a revolver, has not been recovered and it is not known who owned it, police said. Crowder is being held at the Anaheim Temporary Detention Facility on suspicion of murder. Police say no other arrests are expected.

Barry refused to offer possible motives for the shooting but Berlyn’s father, Mark Cosman, said a detective who visited his home Sunday afternoon told him that it appeared to be accidental.

“The fellow was just waving the gun when Berlyn was asleep on the couch and it fired and hit Berlyn in the temple,� said Cosman, 46, who is president of a Los Angeles-based social services organization called Friends of the Volunteers of America. “They say it was not shot in malice, just stupidity perhaps.�

Berlyn knew Crowder only vaguely, Cosman said. He was a regular at pickup games on neighborhood basketball courts. It was on those courts that Berlyn was most at home.

She was a 5-foot-8 guard who could deftly dribble past defenders, grab rebounds with ferocity, and shoot from beyond the three-point line. She won numerous basketball honors, including The Times’ All-Glendale honors three years in a row, and played for a high school all-star team last summer that traveled to Hong Kong.

“She would go to school, race home, change into shorts and a sweat shirt and I wouldn’t see her until dark,� said her father, who frequently joined her in the pickup games. “She would go to a park to play basketball every day. On weekends she’d be gone for five hours a day.�

Scott Scisson, a history teacher who coached Berlyn for four years, said: “She was the most intense, competitive person I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. She ate, she slept, she lived basketball.�

Her high school team was not always as competitive as she was.

The Falcons had a 0-20 record in 1989, but not because of Berlyn. She averaged 18 points a game and won all-star honors that year. The team’s record improved in her two final years and Berlyn boosted her point average to 20.

“She liked to do what other girls in Southern California like,� said Cosman, “going to the beach, playing volleyball, but most of all you could find her at one of the parks around here playing basketball with the boys.�

Berlyn’s father remembers Crowder and his daughter playing on the same team once in a pickup game but said the two did not know each other socially. School officials said Crowder had last been a student at Crescenta Valley in 1989 but they knew little of him beyond that.

Crescenta Valley’s prom had ended Friday at the Hilton without any problems, said Chakib Sambar, school vice principal.

“It was a beautiful prom,� Sambar said. “Everything was perfect. The kids were well behaved. There was absolutely nothing wrong.�

News of the shooting jarred those who knew Berlyn and marred their memories of the year-end celebration.

“We’re a small, close-knit community up here and word travels fast,� Sambar said. “This is absolutely senseless. It’s very shocking, very shocking.�

Berlyn, who has a 12-year-old sister Morgan, was preparing to attend Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph, Mo., on a four-year basketball scholarship.

For the past few weeks, friends and family said, basketball seemed to have been overtaken by the prom in Berlyn’s mind. To attend the dance, she had given up a chance to play in a basketball tournament Friday night.

Lynette Micheli, 16, who cried when she heard the news, said she and Berlyn talked about the prom at school Friday morning. Her teammate and close friend seemed “really excited. She couldn’t wait,� Micheli said.

Berlyn’s father agreed that his daughter had eagerly awaited prom night.

“She went out and got her hair done and got a new dress for it,� said Cosman. “I had questioned the wisdom of taking a limousine down there (to Anaheim) and she said, ‘Daddy, you only do this once.’ �

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story.