Laroyce Hollingsworth, 34

LaRoyce Hollinsworth, 34, a black man, was shot multiple times at 9821 S. Maie Ave. in Watts and died at 1:06 p.m. Thursday, July 5.

He had stopped to chat with an elderly woman. The assailants, black men or youths, shot him from afar. After he fell, one of the assailants ran up to him and shot him twice more in the back.

He was transported to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, where he died. The woman was not hurt. The suspects may have fled in an SUV.

Hollinsworth's cousin Shaconda Wright of Lancaster described him as a Los Angeles native who bore the scars of having been badly burned in a house fire as a child.

Yet he had an easy-going temperament and a sense of humor. "I have never seen him angry. Never," she said. She said Hollinsworth had been arrested and served time for selling drugs and was only a month out of prison, trying to get his life together, when he was shot.

She said his brother had died in a homicide some years ago, also shortly after being released from jail, which may be an especially high-risk period for ex-cons. "They were not bad people. They made some bad decisions," she said.

He is survived by other siblings and a large extended family.