TRUSTING NATURE OF VICTIM MAY HAVE LED TO HIS SLAYING.

Byline: GIDEON RUBIN

Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- Jermaine Tryon was an amicable man with a trusting nature, who was trying to get beyond a troubled past.

That's how Tryon's parents described their slain son on Tuesday, two days after the 25-year-old was stabbed to death in a parking lot near a Lancaster nightclub by a man sheriff's investigators said was his friend.

The grieving parents now believe their son's propensity to see the good in people -- even those who might not have the best intentions -- led to his death.

The only suspect in the killing, 22-year-old Michael King of Lancaster, remained at-large. King is an active member of a South Los Angeles-based criminal street gang with a significant criminal history, sheriff's homicide detective Ty Labbe said. "He's considered an armed and dangerous parolee," Labbe said.

Tryon left five children -- four girls and one boy -- who live in California City.

He comes from an athletic family. His younger brother, Justin Tryon, is junior cornerback at Arizona State University who played at College of the Canyons. His twin brothers, Jarrod and Jarret, played as sophomores on the football team at Taft High in Woodland Hills.

Jermaine Tryon was accomplished track runner at Muir High of Pasadena. He competed in the Junior Olympics twice for the San Fernando Valley-based West Valley Eagles.

"He was a very easygoing, likeable person," his father, Shelton Tryon, said. "If you were a good person, he was your friend and if you were a bad person, he was still your friend."

Jermaine Tryon was trying to get his life back on course after serving more than a year in state prison for visiting his children in violation of a restraining order against him, his mother, Johanna Carlton, said.

Labbe said Tryon's past had no connection to his killing, noting that the incident followed a heated argument.

"(Tryon) was a victim who was brutally attacked," Labbe said. Sheriff's officials initially reported he had been shot.

Shelton Tryon said he and Carlton had repeatedly cautioned their son about choosing his friends more carefully.

Tryon wrote a poem to his mother in August from Delano State Prison, in which he expressed his idealism, and seemed to foreshadow his death.

"... If you are successful you will win some false friends &some true enemies, Succeed anyway," Tryon wrote.

"If you are honest & righteous people may cheat you, but Be honest and Righteous anyway.

"... Don't you see Ma Ma, in the FINAL Analysis ... the final end ... It is between You and GOD, It was NEVER between you and them anyway."

gideon.rubin(at)dailynews.com

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