6 Face Uncertain Futures in Wake of Fatal Hit-and-Run

BURBANK — Five orphans and a Burbank house painter, whose fates were united by a simple act of kindness, faced uncertain futures Friday after a deadly hit-and-run accident two days earlier.

The five underage children of Sharon McPherson, who died after she was struck by a hit-and-run driver, were in Fairfield, Ohio, Friday with older sister Carrie Brown. Brown, 24, said she was trying to figure out a score of details, from funeral arrangements to how to manage in a small apartment with little money--and deal with “a lot of anger.”

McPherson, a 43-year-old singer, had moved to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania earlier this year, seeking entertainment careers for herself and her children.

Agustin Luz Trejo, who was also struck as he tried to help McPherson--a stranger--put gas in her car, faces up to a year of recovery from multiple injuries to his pelvis and spine. Luz, 28, has two daughters, ages 4 years and 4 months.

“I never thought anything like this could happen. I think about it and I still can’t believe it,” said his wife, Beatriz, 25.

McPherson and Luz were hit late Wednesday as they were trying to put gas in McPherson’s car. McPherson had run out of gas and had knocked on Luz’s door asking for help.

Police said Luz drove McPherson to get gas at a nearby station, and was standing with her on the driver’s side of the car when a brown Camaro traveling south on Glenoaks Boulevard plowed into them and sped off, with three of McPherson’s children looking on.

Two men are in custody on suspicion of felony hit-and-run driving and are expected to be arraigned Monday, police said. The investigation is continuing.

It was the second time McPherson’s family has been struck by tragedy. The father of her three eldest daughters died in 1988, shot during a fight in Pittsburgh.

“It’s just so weird,” said Susan Rucker, 17, McPherson’s second daughter, during a tearful interview by phone Friday.

She and Brown are taking care of their four siblings: Joani Rucker, 13, Joshua Mullins, 12, Jessica Mullins, 9, and Johnathan Mullins, 4.

Susan, Joshua and Jessica were in the car waiting when their mother was hit.

“I was looking down and singing and I heard, like, a boom,” Susan Rucker said.

McPherson was thrown nearly 100 feet by the impact. When Susan got out of the car she saw Luz on the ground, but “I looked and I did not see my mom,” she said. “I thought she ran to get help or something. Then I looked up and saw her.”

Joshua leaped out of the car and ran to his mother. Police said someone on the track at nearby Burbank High School called 911. Neighbors came out to find the children clutching each other and screaming.

When Officer Theresa Geier arrived on the scene soon after, she said paramedics were trying to revive McPherson, and “three kids were huddled there on the sidewalk crying. I asked them who was hurt, and they said, their mom.”

Geier said the three children “prayed fervently” all the way to the hospital in her car. When McPherson was declared dead, the children filed in to see her.

“She was covered with a sheet. . . . Her face was intact but you could see the bruises and there was blood on the pillow. They kissed her and cried, and they wanted to know, why was she so cold?” Geier said.

Kevin Shreiner, a youth pastor at Burbank Foursquare Church, came to the hospital to comfort the children, and accompanied them to a neighbor’s house, where they spent the night.

Police, meanwhile, were trying to determine what to do with five children with no immediate relatives in town. They didn’t want to turn them over to Child Protective Services, because the children didn’t want to be separated, Lt. Edward Skvarna said.

Skvarna, the watch commander on duty, negotiated with American Airlines to get the children flown to Cincinnati in the morning. In the end, he put the emergency-level $800 fare on his own credit card, a fare the airline later waived. “I figured, you know what, it doesn’t make any difference,” he said.

Skvarna also awakened city animal control officers who brought over a traveling cage for the children’s dog, Heidi, so that she could accompany them on the airplane.

Geier and her partner, Officer Mark Knight, took the precaution of picking up the children in a vehicle equipped with a siren, figuring they might need it to get through traffic to Los Angeles International Airport.

At the airport, American Airlines provided escorts and breakfast for the children and baggage workers to handle their belongings, which were in backpacks and garbage bags.

When Joshua got on the plane, “the last thing he said was, ‘If you find the guy, let us know,’ ” Geier said. “He was really worried that this guy had killed his mom and gotten away with it.”

Geier, herself the mother of five children ages 6 to 19, said she and Knight waited until the plane took off. “When they hired me, I said, I’m a mother, I can handle anything. But I never expected this. . . . I cry every time I think about it.”

Susan Rucker said the family had moved to Burbank from Pittsburgh just a few months ago to see if they could make it in show business.

The move was the culmination of a lifelong effort by McPherson, who was born in Kentucky but raised in an Ohio orphanage from the time she was 6, Brown said.

She was determined to give her children the best life she could, Susan said. “She was a wonderful mother,” she said. “We were her whole life. Us making it and everything was her happiness.”

McPherson, who was living off Social Security after her husband died, home-schooled her children and provided them with singing, acting and dance lessons.

McPherson “had a voice like Barbra Streisand,” and her children are gifted in turn, Susan said. She said the children have performed in numerous productions in Pittsburgh, often with the city’s Civic Light Opera.

“Theater is our life,” she said.

Joshua landed a role in the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming “Tempest.”

Meanwhile, at County/USC Medical Center, Luz’s family was keeping vigil over his bed.

Luz, described as a devoted family man who immigrated from Mexico City nine years ago, faces up to three months in the hospital.

He has a broken pelvis, a slipped disk, and knee and ankle injuries. He needs extensive surgery on his back, family members said.

He is expected to walk again, but it will take months of physical therapy, they said.

More than 40 visitors have filed through his hospital room to visit the house painter, who has a reputation for helping other people.

“He is so friendly with everyone. He didn’t hesitate to help. He never thought maybe this person was trying to fool him,” Beatriz Luz said.

The family avoided telling him about McPherson’s death, fearing it would upset him, but a visitor let it slip. “He got very quiet,” said his brother, Efraim Luz, 42. “It affected him a lot.”

Luz asks about his daughters, and also worries about McPherson’s children, his wife said. “He keeps saying, ‘What happened to the children? What will happen to them?’ ”

Burbank police said a trust fund has been set up to benefit the children. Donations should be sent to the Rucker/Mullins Memorial Fund, 5th/3rd Bank, 201 E. 4th St., Cincinnati, OH 45202. The account number is 25-932787.