BOY, 12, ACCUSED IN WOMAN'S DEATH.

Byline: Janet Gilmore and Jaxon Van Derbeken Daily News Staff Writers

All of 4 feet 10 inches and 70 pounds, Davon Murdock, age 12, walked into the Southeast Division police station Thursday evening knowing he was wanted for murder.

Earlier in the day, Police Chief Willie L. Williams, in a press conference on a South Central Los Angeles street, said the boy was being sought in the fatal shooting of an 82-year-old grandmother.

``This young man is known to be a very serious and vicious young man in this neighborhood,'' Williams said. ``He seems to just move around carrying weapons and terrorizing people.''

At 7:05 p.m. Murdock, accompanied by his mother, an aunt and a 13-year-old boy who he hopes will provide his alibi, turned himself over to homicide detectives.

The aunt, Gwen Moody, said her nephew found out he was being sought by police and ``came to his mother and told her he wanted to turn himself in because he didn't do it. He's here to clear his name,'' she said.

According to police, Murdock is the suspected triggerman in the fatal shooting of Viola McClain on July 26 after her grandson confronted some teen-agers who were trying to set fire to an abandoned house next door.

The fire, police said, was being set to cover up the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl.

As many as 15 people participated in the rape or egged others on, according to Williams. Afterward, the chief said, the group attempted to set the boarded duplex afire - with the girl in it.

Police have arrested seven other suspects - ranging in age from 15 to 20 - in connection with the sexual assault and slaying and are attempting to identify the others involved.

In a South Central Los Angeles community long-familiar with violence in its streets, the slaying - and the identification of a child as a murder suspect - was met with a weary resignation.

``You just take one day at a time, you can't worry about it,'' said Ethel Hale, who lives across the street from the boarded-up duplex. ``We have so many disturbed young people you don't know what they're going to do.''

Murdock's grandmother said her daughter told her that Murdock was with her at the time of the shooting, that she tried to convince him to stay put, but he left anyway - apparently eager to find out what had happened.

``He could have been with them,'' the grandmother said. ``But I don't believe he did it . . . He just got with the wrong crowd.''

The grandmother, who did not want her name disclosed, wondered whether the suspects now in custody were fingering her grandson because he is not around to defend himself and because he is so young.

Murdock, who turned 12 over the weekend, is the youngest of the suspects. And because he is under 14, he cannot be tried in court as an adult.

Moody, the aunt, said Murdock was with his cousin, Barry Brookins, at the time shots were fired. ``They were together when the shooting started. Then they ran,'' she said.

Brookins, 13, contacted at the Moody home earlier in the day, confirmed the story. ``That's my cousin - he didn't do it, he was with me,'' he said. ``Me and my friends - when they started shooting, we all ran.''

The arrests of other suspects in the case were announced Thursday at a news conference not far from McClain's home on East 111th Street and down the road from the Nickerson Gardens housing project where Murdock apparently had lived with his mother.

Police said Murdock was considered such a threat to the community that the department obtained court permission to release the minor's name to the public, hoping it would help lead to his arrest. He had not been seen for three days.

Detective Supervisor Richard Marks said the boy's mother, Veronica Moody, told police that she could not control him, that she attempted to confront him just a few days ago about not coming home, and that she learned he was armed.

McClain was gunned down just minutes after she returned home from church about 8:40 p.m.

At the time, her grandson, Dumar Starks, told his grandmother he had confronted teen-agers playing in an abandoned house next door who were trying to set fire to mattresses inside the house.

One of the youths, he said, pulled a handgun on him.

She counseled him to leave the boys alone, and then went outside on the porch of the home where she had lived for 60 years.

Starks told police he found his grandmother on the ground, bleeding from a bullet wound to the neck. She died later in a hospital emergency room.

Lt. John Dunkin, with the LAPD's South Bureau homicide, said Starks was unaware that the teens had been involved in the suspected gang rape.

Dunkin said the rape was discovered after the 13-year-old victim came forward the day after the attack and murder.

Police should not have been so quick to release Murdock's name and blame him, said the grandmother.

``There's two sides to every story,''she said.

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