Path of a Bullet

After killing a man, Lamar Proby went home and went to sleep.

“That's the only way I could stop thinking about it. Sleep,” he says.

It was brief refuge. For months afterward, every time he tried to sleep, the murder flashed in his mind, over and over. He saw the bullet hole in his victim's chest. He saw the man slump to the floor without a sound.

He felt no remorse, no regret. But the scene continued to play over and over in his head. For years he relived again and again those few seconds when, as a 14-year-old gangbanger, he killed a defenseless stranger.

Today, Proby is a 19-year-old inmate at the California Youth Authority's maximum security institution in Whittier, serving 10 years for first-degree murder. His reflections offer some insight into the mind of a young murderer.

Proby, who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, began getting into trouble after his parents separated when he was 11. He moved in with his father because he thought his mother was too strict.

“He was at work all day, so I could do what I wanted,” Proby says.

He joined a gang, not because he needed protection, not because of peer pressure, but “for the fun of it.”

He loved the excitement of pulling off robberies with his fellow gangbangers, and he loved the money, which he spent on Guess? clothes and Nike shoes. When he needed to get to a party across town, he'd steal a car.

He smoked marijuana, drank beer and gin.

Instead of going to school, he went to so-called ditching parties, or rode the Blue Line to Long Beach, where he'd walk around, killing time. If school officials called to complain about his truancy, he'd erase the message before his dad got home from his construction job.

He bought a .25-caliber gun for $50 or $60 from a friend, who kept a stash of weapons in the trunk of his car.

“I knew from right and wrong,” Proby says, “but my plan was not getting caught.”

One October afternoon in 1991, he and two friends decided to rob a Los Angeles fashion boutique.

While his friend grabbed fistfuls of jewelry from a glass case, Proby pointed a gun at the sales clerk.

“I pushed him against the wall, and then I tried to open the cash register.

He came toward me and tried to grab the gun. I pushed him away. He came toward me again, and I shot him in the chest.

“If he got the gun from me, I felt he was going to shoot me with it,” he says.

The boys bolted from the store and gathered at a friend's house to split up the jewelry. Then Proby went home and slept. When his father got home from work, Proby tried to tell him what happened.

“I said, ‘Daddy, I killed someone.’ He said, ‘Stop playing with me.’ I said, ‘I'm serious,’ but he didn't believe me.”

That night, Proby saw a story about the murder on the TV news.

“I went in my room and turned the music up loud and sat there,” he says. “I was hoping I wouldn't get caught.”

The next morning, without saying why, Proby moved into his mother's home. It was to place some distance between himself and the crime scene.

The next month, he got caught -- after another holdup. After he and his friends robbed a 7-Eleven market, police tailed them to a motel room and arrested them.

“We tried to throw the gun out the window, but it got stuck in an air conditioning vent,” he says.

Police traced the gun to the fatal bullet. Proby pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in December, and in 1992, he was committed to the CYA.

He's scheduled to be released in 2002, since juvenile offenders in California can be held only until their 25th birthday, but he'll be eligible for parole in 1999.

Even after he was behind bars, Proby didn't feel sorry for his victim, a man in his 30s with a wife and two children.

“I just felt because I didn't know him, why should I feel anything for him,” he says.

Then one day a CYA counselor asked, “What if your father had been in that store?”

“I pictured him behind the counter,” Proby says. “I pictured how his family was feeling and the pain they were going through.”

He finally understood what he had done.

Six weeks ago, Proby wrote a letter to the victim's widow, asking her forgiveness.

“I told her I was sorry for what I had done,” he says. “I know all the pain and suffering I caused. I asked her if she could ever forgive me for what I had done.”

He hasn't received a reply.

“I can understand if she don't forgive me, because I took her husband's life,” he says.

Yet, he doesn't think he should spend the rest of his life in prison. And he doesn't think he should be written off.

“I'm not a bad person,” he says. “I'm just a person who wanted to have fun. That's what everybody was doing then.”

Proby copes with what he did then by not dwelling on it.

“If I keep worrying about it, it'll bring me down. I look forward to the future.”

He plans for what he insists will be a crime-free life once he gets out.

Like many CYA inmates, Proby has come to feel remorse. He has also earned a high school diploma. He wants to become a truck driver.

“I don't want to come back here,” he says.

He has a 50-50 chance. Half of all juvenile offenders wind up back behind bars.

At least one CYA counselor believes Proby will reach his goal.

“There's no doubt in my mind he's going to be successful when he gets out,” says James Threatt.

Ask Proby what he'd say to other youths embarking on the same path he took when he was 11, and he says, “I'd tell them the way they're going is not the right way.

“Look where I'm at. An institution, jail,” he says. “You might be having fun out there right now, but when you get locked up here, it ain't no more fun.”