A troubled past
Detectives continue investigation into death of 31-year-old Inglewood man
Editor’s note: The following story is the final installment of a seven-part series looking at six murders in 2017.
Whoever killed Tron Scott Mayo Jr. near a rugged stretch of rural road in Castaic definitely wanted the 31-yeard-old dead.
The Inglewood resident was stabbed 46 times, shot five times and had his head and face viciously beaten, according to an autopsy report prepared by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical-Examiner Coroner.
But, while homicide detectives investigating Santa Clarita Valley’s sixth homicide of 2017 remain certain of murder, they have no idea—after more than half a year, or at least are saying nothing and have arrested no suspects—why the ex-convict, son of a minister and father of a toddler was killed.
“We’re trying to work on some
leads, so to report anything now could compromise that effort,” Lt. Rodney Moore of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Homicide Bureau told The Signal this week, offering no insight into motive. “We’re holding everything close to the vest.”
Grim discovery
On Oct. 23, about 1:20 p.m., a rancher visiting a remote stretch of rugged land where her family’s cattle grazes freely, off of Ridge Route Road, north of Castaic, opened a locked metal gate to a remote access road.
That’s when she spotted a man laying on the dusty access road, just off a turnout point along a desolate road bordered by hills, behind the metal swinging gate with a sign: Private Property Keep Out.
The woman, who also saw blood, phoned 911 immediately.
When paramedics assigned to Fire Engine 149 arrived at the hilly isolated spot near Pinecrest Place, they found the man dead.
Deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, who also responded, notified detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Homicide Bureau.
Crime scene
Detectives arriving at the access road noted in their report that the metal gate was wide enough to allow a person to climb through.
They collected items such as a prescription bottle, two shell casings, the victim’s cap and fingernail evidence.
Detectives described the man they found there as “an adult black male with brown eyes, bald head, beard and mustache and natural teeth.”
It would take the FBI less
than an hour to confirm the man’s identity for detectives through fingerprints: Tron Scott Mayo Jr., born May 28, 1986.
Officials suspect Mayo was killed in the SCV.
Life change
Tron Scott Mayo Jr. was born in Hawthorn Memorial Hospital. He had four brothers and a sister.
Four years ago, he became a father to a boy.
Rev. Tyrone Scott MayoBrooks, a minister who now lives in Baltimore, said, having escaped his own trappings of drugs and crime growing up in Brooklyn, he saw his oldest son trying to turn his life around.
Sadly, he told The Signal, Tron Scott Mayo Jr. was unable to outpace a crimeplagued past.
“He was a good father who had a troubled time, a troubled life,” Mayo-Brooks said. “He had a little boy, and he wanted to be there for him.”
“He wanted to get his life together,” his father said. “He grew up in L.A. around MacArthur Park where there was drugs and gangs. He fell victim to it.”
“Mr. Mayo served a 3-year, 8-month sentence after being convicted of second-degree robbery and for concealing a firearm in a vehicle,” Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told The Signal.
“He also was returned to custody more than once for parole violations. In all, he was in custody from July 2005 to June 2012. He was released from parole supervision in June, 2015.” he said.
Mayo served his sentence and returned to various prisons, including North Kern, California Medical Facility (Vacaville), California State Prison, Los Angeles (Lancaster) and Pleasant Valley State Prison.
Since his last release from prison, Mayo worked at the Forum in Inglewood.
“He would call me for advice,” Mayo-Brooks said, noting that at times it seemed his son would leave a life of crime the way he did.
Father’s journey
Before Tyrone Scott Mayo-Brooks became a minister, he led a wild life, he said.
Born in Brooklyn, the father of a boy who would become SCV’s last homicide victim of 2017, Mayo-Brooks grew up on the lower East Side of Manhattan.
Mayo-Brooks served in the military, and when he got out, he said, began “running wild” until he found salvation through his belief in God.
“I looked to the Lord,” he told The Signal.
Living in Inglewood, as a changed man, no longer living with Tron’s mother, he began working at the old Union Rescue Mission, helping the homeless, following the word of God.
Some days, on his way to the Mission, he would stop and visit Tron and Tron’s mother, he said.
“We would have a prayer before I would go. He was proud I had turned my life around,” he said.
The life-changing example, however, was “the only thing I had left to give him,” the father said. “It was a hurting feeling to hear I lost him.”
If his son had been trying to leave his past behind, as the older man believes, he wasn’t fast enough.
“He knew (his past) was coming for him,” the father said.
“If I could give my life for his, I would. If I could give it all over to him, the rest of my life, I would,” Mayo-Brooks said. “I would love for him to have the rest of my life.”