A 23-year-old woman accused in the beating death of a 65- year-old man at a Metro Blue Line station pleaded not guilty Thursday to a murder charge.
Tracy Joy Gomez is charged in an alleged attack June 13 on John Whitmore, who died a week later from his injuries.
The criminal complaint alleges that Gomez personally used brass knuckles in the commission of the crime and that she had previously been convicted of second-degree robbery in April 2009.
Gomez was arrested Sunday night in Hawthorne and remains jailed on just over $1 million bail while awaiting her next appearance Sept. 15 in a Compton courtroom.
A second woman, Virginia Butler, 23, of Los Angeles, was arrested Tuesday in connection with the alleged attack. She is due in court Friday in Compton, but had not yet been charged, authorities said.
Whitmore was waiting for a train when two women started arguing with him, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Kim Manatt.
Whitmore collapsed to the ground after being punched and kicked. The suspects then fled the scene, Manatt said.
Whitmore, a painter and sculptor, suffered blunt force trauma to the head and was declared dead June 20 at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood.
“It was a vicious crime and it obviously took awhile,” Whitmore’s sister, Gwendolyn Whitmore Aldridge, said July 22 when a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to the convictions of whoever beat Whitmore to death.
“It wasn’t a hit and a fall.”
— City News Service