A few weeks ago I cell phoned Big Cat, a legendary member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, who the LAPD described in a 2003 injunction against his Crenshaw/Hyde Park-based street gang as “a shot caller…… who instills fear in the neighborhood.” I could see that, back in the day. Big Cat, who legally goes by Kevin Doucette, happens to be an old friend of mine who I met about 28 years ago while covering Watts and South Central for the Times and who has helped me out in dark times. In 1998, I wrote an article about him at a meeting led by his brother Mustafa, aka Li’l Cat, and Malik Spellman trying to quell gang violence in Inglewood.
Anyway, he answered my phone call, I asked how he was doing and he said, “I’m heartbroken.”
Heartbroken? Big bad Big Cat heartbroken? Heartbroken is for some 13-year-old Emma whose crush went to see “Barbie” with a 14-year-old.
But Big Cat heartbroken? What the hell happened? He told me.
“They killed Madd Ronnie,” Kevin Doucette said in his trademark gravelly voice. Wow, I thought, Madd Ronnie got killed. Big Cat continued. “They shot Madd. Some 16, 17-year-old kid jumped out the car and started blasting. I got shot in the thigh. Again. But Madd is dead. Believe that? Madd Ronnie is dead.”
Madd Ronnie, aka Grant Lyons, born 11/27/63 was killed 8/19/23, exactly 100 days shy of his 60th birthday, something he was – in his “theatrical fashion” – making a big deal about. “60 for 60!” he would say. “A 60 turning 60!” I guess being in the Rollin 60s and making it to 60 years of age is quite an accomplishment.
Madd and Big Cat and several others were hanging out that summer evening around 6:30 p.m. in front of a house on Keniston Avenue and 58th Place, a few blocks west of West Blvd, a couple south of Slauson, a block from Momma Kris Child Care Center. Nearby liquor surveillance video captures a car driving by and, shortly after driving by again, and parking. The young shooter exits the car and almost immediately begins firing. The first four bullets hit two parked white cars.
“I thought it was firecrackers.” said Big Cat who was with others sitting on milk crates and shooting the breeze. Madd Ronnie was standing, his back to the shots. Suddenly, he lurches forward, his back arches. Grant Lyles takes three or four stutter-steps, his last, and he starts to fall.
“I got up to break his fall, but I got shot in the leg,” Big Cat said. “I‘m trying to pull him closer to a car so it can shield us and I held him. Madd Ronnie took his last breath. I had held another homie long time ago and I know the last breath. His lungs make this gargled fast whoosh sound. There’s the whoosh and air and blood come out of his mouth. His last breath. I laid him down.”
Personally. I had never met Madd Ronnie aka Grant Lyons, but I’d heard of him for ages. I guess it was something about his street name that intrigued me. What was he so mad about that it became key to his streetname?
Even in the 2003 gang injunction prepared largely in part by an officer Jeffrey Martin #32877, a major portion of the two-page report on Grant Lyons talks about his anger and mentions him often yelling at officers and calling them “bitches”, giving them the middle finger. The report says Lyons would yell at them “I’m Madd Ronnie!” and “This is my hood!” as his middle finger reverse-saluted them.
Some of his fellow 60s told me he would cuss out police more than anyone they knew. If calling an LAPD officer a “bitch” was the equivalent of a Major League Baseball home run then Grant “Mad Ronnie” Lyons would have been Barry Bonds.
But the “mad” face, the scowl, was often just an act, his homies said. “Most the time, he was putting on that face and he wasn’t mad about anything,” said a friend.
I’ve covered more than my share of killings, but even I got to wondering why a large swath of our city was in deep mourning over the death of Madd Ronnie. At his funeral last Monday, the several hundred gathered were silent as two white horses pulled a white carriage carrying Madd Ronnie’s casket. The outpouring of love and ache on Facebook was impressive, too.
After talking a several people who knew him, I figured it out. Madd Ronnie simply loved where he lived. He loved his neighborhood.
“Ronnie promoted the neighborhood,” said his friend of 47 years Tim Chaney, a information system analyst. “Ronnie had been living in Hyde Park/Crenshaw area for 55 years and he truly loved the neighborhood.”
He made this part of Los Angeles seem like a small town where everyone knows each other and looks after each other. It was not unusal for Madd Ronnie to pull up to a friend’s house and the two of them take a walk. And others would join in and, before you knew it, 15, 20 people were in on that walk, stopping in neighborhood clothing shop or a liquor store or a mom-and-pop market. It was not some dangerous ‘hood. It was his ‘hood. He knew and greeted people’s kids, parents and grandparents.
When I suggested that he was loved because he protected the weak from rival gangs, Tim Chaney said “On a pie chart. I would say that was maybe 20% of why he was loved. The main thing was that he promoted the ‘hood. Madd Ronnie loved the ‘hood. This was his home. And he loved it and the people here. That was the biggest difference between Madd and many other people from here. To so many others, it was like a purgatory. A place to make some money and move on. To Ronnie, all of it was a place he loved.”
At the court hearing for the 2003 injunction against the Rollin’ 60s by then city attorney Rockard J. Delgadillo – which made it illegal for two or more to congregate – Madd Ronnie was one of the few who showed up in court to protested to the judge. “Where are my rights to be in my own neighborhood? Why can’t I talk to people in my own neighborhood?”
Chaney tells of one time when the two of them were at a fruit stand near Magic Mountain and Ronnie bought a bag of grapefruits. They came back to the ‘hood. “Ronnie saw an old man sitting alone on a porch and just gave him the bag and they started talking. It was Small Town, USA right there.”
The first thing Big Cat told me about him, after talking about his scowl, was how he was a fist fighter. “He was devastating. He was fearless. What he detested more than anything was the guys who would go to the gun. Who would not fight and just start shooting. He detested those guys.”
And that’s who killed him.
That his life was ended in a manner he had long detested, well, maybe it was meant to be. It could prolong his legacy in the Hyde Park neighborhood and maybe beyond if that word is spread and it just becomes common knowledge that shooting someone is simply not cool. It is cowardly,
In the April, 5, 1998 Times article I mentioned up top, part of it included this from Big Cat.
“The killing’s been going on since before you were born. We’ve got to try and show homies how to live, not die.”
Doucette said older gang members need to be at the next meeting.
“A lot of the older guys are no longer actually banging, but they’re like politicians now ordering the young foot soldiers to do the killing,” Doucette said. “We need to get them to the table.”
A quarter century later, even with the tremendous efforts of many, the city of Los Angeles still has many open seats at that table.
