Three families share the relentless hurt of losing a child to senseless violence. Anger--and thoughts of what might have been--haunt them. : 'It's the Worst Pain'

L.A. Times Archives

May 20, 1993 12 AM PT

They are angry. They are hurt. And they wouldn’t want anyone to go through the pain they have experienced.

“I have been dealt an excruciating blow that I will never really recover from,” Margaret Ensley says about her 17-year-old son’s death. Three months ago Michael Shean Ensley was standing in a hallway at Reseda High School when a 15-year-old student confronted him and shot him in the chest. The student was later arrested and convicted of murder.

Henry and Esther Lorta are the parents of 16-year-old Sheila Lorta, who was slain eight months ago. Sheila, a cheerleader and peer counselor, had been crossing the street in front of Paramount High School when a man on a bicycle opened fire, striking the teen-ager in the head. Sheila’s killer is still at large.

On Easter, Ryan Brown, 2, was struck in the head by gang gunfire. His mother, Tamara Lee, had taken Ryan to Balboa Park for an egg hunt and picnic when a fistfight escalated into a gun battle between gangs. Lee scooped Ryan into her arms and fled for safety inside a parked car, where her son was shot. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced brain-dead the next day. A 31-year-old man has been charged with murder.

Says Ryan’s grandmother and Lee’s mother, Linda Stones: “My daughter donated Ryan’s organs to help other babies. So that made us feel good. But my heart goes out to her so much because she is going through a lot of hurt.”

In an emotionally charged discussion with staff writer Michael Quintanilla, Lee, Stones, Ensley and the Lortas shared their hurt and anger over the senseless deaths of their children and their thoughts on the future of our city and our kids.

Margaret Ensley: “When I came to California in 1961, I came with hope I would find a better job and establish my family without any problems. At the time of Michael’s death, I was very concerned about what Los Angeles was going through. That’s why I became very overprotective. I wouldn’t let him go off my block. I wouldn’t let him go to the corner store because in the outlying areas of where I live, Athens Park, there is gang activity. I didn’t feel safe.

“I chose private school for Michael for many years until I could no longer afford it. Then I sent him to what I thought was a safer environment, the Valley. I’m angry because I think the murder was senseless. I think we’ve gotten to a point in the city where life means nothing to people anymore.”

Henry Lorta: “The way I feel now and the way I felt before Sheila was murdered are totally opposite. Before, I felt safe. But I was still overprotective of my children because of the violence out here. I’ve mentioned to my wife, ‘Esther, I don’t like L.A. I’d rather live out in Northern California, where I grew up.’

“Our pain is just so great, it is unexplainable. The person who took Sheila’s life, he’s out running around. No charges have been filed. We feel like our lives have been torn apart.”

Ensley: “They caught the murderer who killed my son. He was right there, in school. They found him. I said, ‘Maybe we’ll bring him to justice. I can look him square in the face and get some questions answered as to why this happened.’ And as I sat in that courtroom and I looked at this person, well, he was feeling no emotion and yet I couldn’t even hate him. I felt sorry. Somewhere along the line, society failed him. Whoever touched this person--his mother, his father, teachers, principals, police, parole officer--they all have to share in the responsibility of my son’s murder.”

Linda Stones: “I’m protective too. I have five grandkids. I still include Ryan with the other children because he is still with me here, in my heart. In my neighborhood, it is terrible. I mean, we see a death almost every week in South-Central. So we are used to the killings and the gangs and everything. But still, we couldn’t have protected Ryan any more than we did.

“I feel for every one of you in this room, because I know what you are going through. We are going through the same hurt. A hurt that is just like a part of your heart is not there.

“I am close to God. I feel we, society, have come away from the church. The violence out there is all about money and power, and that is frightening to me. I don’t know what we can do to stop it. I don’t think we can stop it.”

Ensley: “We have to do something. You know, often we hear the government say, ‘Well, there is no money for programs.’ The government has taken activities away from the youth--outlets that they normally would have had which would be constructive.

“So what you find are kids roaming the streets. I see kids out on the corners, no place to go, nothing to do. They’ve gotten away from parental control. They don’t have any spiritual guidance whatsoever because their parents don’t have it. So if the parents don’t have it, the kids aren’t going to have it, and so you have no respect for life.”

Henry Lorta: “I think a lot of this starts at home, teaching the kid the right morals and family values.”

Esther Lorta: “There’s a lot of pressure out there for kids. There is peer pressure, pressure from gangs, pressure from school. If you don’t teach a child their values and morals by the time they are 14 years old, that’s where you might lose them.

“But as a parent you need to stay on top of your children, especially when it looks like one of your kids is going wrong. You can’t give up and say, ‘Well, this is the life they’ve chosen’ or ‘It’s out of my hands.’ It’s always in your hands. I feel sorry for the gang members themselves, because what they don’t realize is that they are paving the way for their own children. I don’t know if the guy who shot Sheila has any kids, but I would never want to wish his son or daughter any harm. Or anybody to go through the pain of losing a child.”

Stones: “It’s the worst pain because you always think about the pain that your child went through. I say let the gang members walk around the cemeteries and see the tombstones of the people they’ve killed. Let them walk around and see how final it feels inside. They didn’t get even with the person by killing. They didn’t win.”

Ensley: “It’s the coward’s way out. They look at this to be macho: I wiped out the homey.

“We really need to rethink our priorities as a nation. I think it’s time for us to take a look at home. Babies are killing babies is what it amounts to, and there’s got to be a reason why.”

Stones: “And what about all the guns and the movies with the violence? I don’t think the movie industry realizes what they are doing. Even the rappers. They sing about shooting you down. Oh my God, it just has to be stopped. It has to begin with the President and on down.”

Ensley: You are absolutely right. It has to start with our government agencies, but we are they. We are going to have to--as a nation of people--get together and put the people in office who are going to do what we need them to do, and that is to start focusing on the safety and security of our children. We’ve got to do something to save our youth. Otherwise, we will have no future. What’s our future going to be like if there are no more Sheilas and Michaels and Ryans?”

Esther Lorta: “I don’t want to stay in Los Angeles. I thought I was immune to the violence. Now that Sheila is not here, I see it’s happening so much. I woke up.”

Tamara Lee: “I was in the front seat of a car when Ryan was shot. I took him out of the car. I fell down behind the car door until they finished shooting, and I was holding him on the ground. It keeps playing over and over in my mind.”

Ensley: “That’s what you do, remember. In Michael’s case, he’s passing in the hallway and the guy walks up to him and says, ‘You got a problem with me?’ Michael is going to his class, and in my mind I am seeing my son. He has his book bag on his back. He is approached by someone he doesn’t even know.

“And I’m wondering: What was going through his mind? What was he thinking? Was he looking for his mother, did he need me?

“My hope for my son was to be a productive citizen. I really didn’t care what he did as long as it was a profession that he could be proud of and that he enjoyed doing. His goal--we talked about it two weeks before he was killed--was to make enough money to be able to support a wife and family.”

Esther Lorta: “Sheila was athletic. She counseled her peers. She loved doing that. It helped her grow. She was very confident with herself. And she was having a good time. She had set her goals to become a criminologist, and she was going to enroll at Cerritos Community College.”

Henry Lorta: “I’d go, ‘Sheila, why do you want to be a criminologist?’ She’d say, ‘Dad, I want to be able to help people. I want to be able to see what makes them think that way.’ She was loving and caring and always with that big smile.”

Esther Lorta: “You’d never, never think that our children would leave for school in the morning and they wouldn’t come home.”

Ensley: “I have what I call crises, where I stand in the middle of the floor and scream to the top of my lungs until there are no more tears left. For me, tomorrow doesn’t mean anything. I’ve lost the desire to want to do anything other than fight for other children. I don’t even have any goals, aspirations for myself. I’m in the process of starting Mothers Against Violence in Schools (MAVIS). I want to see what Michael’s death can bring about.

“I’m not gonna stop until something is done.”

Esther Lorta: “I had Sheila when I was 17. We grew up together. We were extremely close. She was doing all the things that I never did. I never graduated from high school. She had a lot of friends. She was a cheerleader. That was something I encouraged her to do because I always wanted to and never did.

“What I have trouble with is the despair. Of her physical absence. In the beginning, it was like Sheila was on a long vacation. I was still expecting her to come home. I think of her every day. There’s an emptiness. No matter what you do, no matter how busy you are, it’s there--and it’s always going to be there. I feel sorry for my other two kids because they don’t have a whole mother.

“I blamed everybody from God to myself because I figured that someplace in between both of us, we could have kept her safe.”

Ensley: “No, it wasn’t your fault. It was the person who actually did the crime.”

Esther Lorta: “I blame myself for not being able to go into the emergency room and hold her hand and talk to her and try to bring her back. We talk about her all the time. She’s always in our conversation: ‘Remember when Sheila did this?’ or ‘Remember when she would do that?’ ”

Henry Lorta: “I’ve gone to the school and kissed the ground Sheila laid on. I still go there from time to time. I drive by the school sometimes and I yell out Sheila’s name as loud as I can. It will never bring her back, but I just want people to know how we feel.

“I go to the cemetery every Sunday and keep her little stone as shiny as I can. I’ve lost 20 pounds. I’ve lost my job. Esther has gone back to work, but I’ve been at home, just like a zombie, trying to keep myself busy.”

Ensley: “I cannot look at teen-agers. I have to pull my car over. To see them doing the things that you know your son used to do or dress the way he used to dress, that is hard for me. I think about the way he checked in every day, called me at work and say, ‘Hey, Mom, bring hamburgers home.’ ”

Lee: “I feel bad at night and in the morning, before I go to sleep and when I wake up.”

Stones: “The morning is the worst because I want to see little Ryan. Sometimes I go to the cemetery. That eases my pain. I take flowers, and it makes me feel a little better because I feel like he’s there. Sometimes I’m sitting and then I just break out and I’m crying until no more tears come out. When I see another baby, you look, and it starts all over again.”

Ensley: “Until the government on down takes an interest in this problem, we are not going to make it as a human race. That is the message that needs to be carried, from the President to the parents.”

Stones: “I’d like to say to all the gang members, whoever puts their hands on a gun, just think, ‘By the grace of God, someone could be doing this to my family.’ ”

Henry Lorta: “It could be your son or daughter.”

Esther Lorta: “In the beginning, all you want is just to die right along with your child and, after awhile, as the time goes by, you want to live because of that person. I was living through Sheila. She’d go to the prom, and I’d be in there putting on her makeup, rolling her hair, doing all the things that I never got a chance to do. She would tell me about her boyfriends. And now I am living because of her, for her.”

Ensley: “What you were grieving was the future that you had planned in your mind for your child, and that is a lot of what your pain is. I could see Michael graduating, I could see Michael going to the prom, I could see him getting a wife. And I’m there as the mother.”

Esther Lorta: “And who takes the credit for that? We do.”

Ensley: “We do.”

Esther Lorta: “We did our jobs; we did our jobs well.

“It’s so crazy the things that you think, you know. Sheila was only 16 years old. And now that she is gone, sometimes I wish she would have gotten pregnant at 15 or 16 so I would have this child of hers. It’s a crazy thing. But all I have is pictures and clothes, nothing of hers.”