Slaying Ends Effort to Help Wayward Teen

For months, Stephen Baker fretted about his future stepson’s bad-news friends and wild behavior. Trying to set things right, he rearranged his work schedule to spend more time with the teen-ager.

But before he could start his new hours, the 36-year-old San Marcos man was shot dead--the victim, authorities say, of his live-in fiancee’s 15-year-old son.

“He’s just a little kid, too. He’s just a little punk kid,” said Kenny Scheffler, Baker’s next-door neighbor and friend. “You could tell he had that bad attitude, but I couldn’t believe he’d do something like that.”

San Diego County Sheriff’s Department homicide detectives say the youth, his mother, Trina Tomlinson, and her 10-year-old daughter were sitting in the living room at 6:45 Sunday evening when Baker entered the room and confronted the teen-ager about having used Baker’s stereo.

An argument ensued, and the youth reached into his waistband, pulled out a .38-caliber semi-automatic handgun, and opened fire on Baker, detectives said, hitting him in the abdomen and chest.

Neighbors kept Baker alive with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but he died 45 minutes later at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.

Seconds after the shooting, authorities said, the teen-ager fled the Grandon Avenue apartment, which opens onto a small playground, and slammed the door behind him.

Children stopped playing and started screaming.

Adults came running, including Scheffler, who accidentally met the 120-pound teen-ager as he emerged from the apartment holding the gun. Scheffler said he’d heard two shots, then a pause, then several more shots.

“His teeth were gritted. He looked pissed, not scared at all about what happened,” Scheffler said. “He pointed the gun at me and said, ‘What . . . are you looking at?’ It felt like my heart stopped.”

Sheriff’s Lt. John Tenwolde said the youth met another resident minutes later and brandished his gun and swore, before leaving the complex on foot.

The suspect was was arrested about noon Monday, just before officials were about to release the youth’s photograph along with a public warning and a plea for aid in finding him.

Undercover detectives sneaked up on the youth as he walked along a street in north Carlsbad with a 14-year-old female friend and arrested him without incident on suspicion of murder, Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Jim Cooke said.

The boy was carrying a .38-caliber handgun, Cooke said.

Early this summer, Baker, Trina Tomlinson, her two children, the couple’s 5-year-old son and a pet bird moved into the Lake Park Terrace Apartments, a modest, neatly groomed complex with a swimming pool near Lake San Marcos.

Scheffler said he struck up a friendship with Baker and Tomlinson and sometimes baby-sat their children. He said the family seemed “really nice,” but that Baker had confided to him that he and the boy sometimes clashed. Scheffler said that days before the shooting, the boy ran away to Sacramento.

“He wasn’t sure what to do with him,” Scheffler said. “He said (the youth) was hanging out with a bunch of bad kids.”

Sheriff’s Department officials say the suspect was involved with a gang and was a student at Twin Oaks High School, an alternative public school in San Marcos for students who have problems in traditional school.

Baker recently requested earlier work hours to have extra afternoon time to spend with the teen-ager, said Jim Vanderheiden, a supervisor at Hunter Industries, a 600-employee sprinkler manufacturer in San Marcos where Baker oversaw seven employees.

The new 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift would have started Monday, Vanderheiden said. Instead, shaken employees collected donations for flowers and the personnel department arranged for counselors to come in to help Baker’s co-workers deal with his death.

Baker had worked at the company for about six years.

“He was kind of a quiet guy and a very hard worker,” Vanderheiden said. “I know he loved his 5-year-old boy and his wife-to-be. He will be sorely missed.”

Neighbors at the Lake Park Terrace Apartments kept their children in doors Monday morning, saying they feared the suspect would return with his gun.

On Monday, Scheffler looked toward his neighbors’ apartment, where just days before the family had thrown a birthday party for the 5-year-old son. Now the drapes were drawn and no one was home.

“They seemed like a regular, normal family,” he said. “We were just getting to be friends.”

Authorities say cases like the San Marcos killing are becoming more frequent. FBI and state Justice Department statistics show that in San Diego County, 80 juveniles were arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter in 1991, a 700% increase over 1982, when 10 such arrests were made.