Trial’s End Won’t Be a Salve for Their Pain

Before leaving his family’s Inglewood home on the evening of Sept. 27, 2001, Christopher Florence reminded his mother to wait up for him. He’d be back from his date, he promised, in time to watch their favorite television show together.

It was one of the few promises her son ever broke, Brenda Florence said.

Police say Christopher Florence, a 21-year-old Neiman Marcus receiving clerk, made a wrong turn down a one-way street. A man at the end of the block, mistaking him for a rival gang member, aimed a 9-millimeter handgun at him and pulled the trigger.

When detectives came to tell Florence that her son had been killed, she dropped to the floor. She begged them to kill her too.

But worse was yet to come.

In the days that followed, two more of Florence’s sons were killed. Inglewood gang member Craigen Armstrong is to be sentenced to death next month for the slayings of all three brothers.

For Florence and her one surviving son, however, the trial’s end will bring little satisfaction.

“There is no pill, no therapy, nothing anybody can say or do to make us feel better,” she said.

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In the tight-knit Florence family, the four brothers looked out for each other and, after their father’s death from multiple sclerosis, for their mother.

At the time of his death, Christopher lived at home with his mother, as did Brian, 17. Michael, 27, owned a condo nearby and lived with his fiancee. Torry, 29, lived with his fiancee and daughter in a home he owned.

But the family still came together almost daily.

The three older brothers worked. Brian was still in high school. None had a criminal record, police said, and none were involved in gangs.

They weren’t risk-takers -- until Christopher died.

Inglewood Police Officer Martin Sissec, who had come to know the family years before when Michael was a Police Explorer, noticed how distraught the brothers were when he stopped by to express his condolences after Christopher’s slaying.

Michael was particularly upset and “wanted to do anything to find his brother’s killers, anything that he could,” Sissec later testified.

Two nights after Christopher’s death, a woman who identified herself as Nicole called to say she had information about the killing. The brothers agreed to a meeting.

Shortly after receiving the call, Michael called Sissec. The officer told him to stay home and let police handle the investigation.

Instead, desperate for information, the three brothers, along with their friend Floyd Watson, drove to Century Boulevard and Doty Avenue in Inglewood, an area controlled by a violent street gang known as the Crenshaw Mafia.

As they drove by the Hollywood Park Casino about midnight, a red Ford Contour pulled alongside their car. Armstrong, wearing a red sweatshirt with a skull and crossbones, leaned out a car window and fired six times.

One bullet struck Michael in the head. Another hit Torry in the neck. Brian and Watson ducked down in the back seat.

When the shooting stopped, Brian looked up to see his two brothers slumped over. He and Watson, fearful that they too would be killed, jumped out and flagged down passing cars.

“They’re gonna shoot me,” Brian hysterically told an electrician who stopped his vehicle. “They’re gonna, you know, kill me.”

Brian called 911 before returning to where Michael lay dead and Torry was taking his last breaths.

Brenda Florence later testified that she had heard gunfire as she sat in her living room that night. “I heard the shots that killed my children,” she said.

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Michael and Torry Florence had ignored an officer’s advice in seeking information on their brother’s slaying. But police and prosecutors understand how high emotions can drive such an impulse.

About 40% of the 81 homicides that have occurred in Inglewood over the last three years remain unsolved. Police acknowledge that the hardest cases are gang killings, which make up at least half of all the homicides.

“Who is going to testify against the Crenshaw Mafia in that neighborhood?” asks Deputy Dist. Atty. Sean Hassett, who prosecuted Armstrong. “People don’t want to testify against gang members because they don’t want to end up dead.”

Inglewood Det. Jeff Steinhoff, who investigated the Florence brothers’ slayings, said he always warns victims’ families that taking the law into their own hands, especially in areas with high gang activity, is extremely risky.

Now, he says, he simply tells the story of the Florence brothers to make the point.

“It is very, very dangerous for family members, anybody but police, to go out and try to find the killers,” Steinhoff said. “But families can’t wait. Families go out and do what they want to do.”

After Torry and Michael Florence were killed, police learned that Armstrong, a known Crenshaw Mafia gang member, had been involved in an altercation at a nearby 7-Eleven store just before the shootings. They showed his photograph to Brian and Watson, and both identified him as the gunman.

Within days, detectives had found the murder weapon in a car registered to Armstrong’s stepfather. They found a sweatshirt with gun residue in Armstrong’s house.

But it wasn’t until the next year, when Armstrong’s former girlfriend, Tyiska Webster, came forward, that police connected him to Christopher Florence’s death. Webster said Armstrong had told her he shot Christopher because he thought he was a rival gang member. He also admitted shooting the other two brothers, she said.

Prosecutors believe Michael and Torry Florence were set up, lured into an ambush by Armstrong.

Defense attorneys argued that the brothers were seeking revenge when they went out looking for Christopher’s killer.

“In his view,” said Franklin Peters, Armstrong’s lawyer, “it was his life or theirs.”

Armstrong testified that he acted in self-defense when he shot Torry and Michael. He denied killing Christopher.

Jurors didn’t believe him. They convicted Armstrong of killing the three brothers and recommended he receive the death penalty. He is to be sentenced Jan. 5.

“We wanted justice, and we got it,” Brenda Florence said recently. But that hasn’t made things easier.

Armstrong “didn’t only kill my three sons,” she said. “He killed Brian and me too.”