Slaying of 2 Compton Officers Re-Enacted : Investigation: Police hope to jog memories of witnesses or encourage others to come forward. Swarm of reporters covers event.

With about half a dozen terrified witnesses and a crowd of television cameras in tow, Compton police Monday night re-enacted the recent execution-style slaying of two police officers--a crime that has thus far left them struggling for clues.

On Rosecrans Avenue just east of Dwight Avenue in Compton, policemen played the roles of the two officers who were shot. Witnesses observed the crime from this angle, then from that. Illuminated by the spotlight of a police helicopter, the jostling media filmed and photographed the event.

This was an unusual approach to criminal investigation, police acknowledged, but after two weeks of conventional police work they were running out of leads. It has been that long since Compton Officers Kevin Michael Burrell and James Wayne MacDonald were killed, and authorities have not charged any suspects.

“We still don’t know what happened out there that night,” said Detective Rickey Petty, a Police Department spokesman.

“Hopefully, this will help us piece it together and find out what went wrong.”

The Compton police have held about five re-enactments of homicides in the past decade, Petty said.

“We usually do it when we can’t figure out what happened,” Petty said. “We get the witnesses to come out to the scene and look at the entire incident again. Maybe it will help them better understand the chronology of events. Maybe they’ll remember something that they didn’t recall right after the incident.”

But inviting the media to witness the re-enactment was a first for the Compton police. Officers hope that extensive coverage of the event will encourage possible witnesses who have not come forward to contact police.

“This kind of approach has been successful in the past so we decided to give it another try now,” Petty said. “But even if it doesn’t solve the shooting, it’s a valuable training exercise. Maybe we can learn more about what happened and prevent it from happening again.”

Friday night, a man sought for questioning in connection with the killings surrendered to a television reporter and was arrested by Compton police. Keith Terris Caldwell, 27, who was arrested in connection with the October murder of his pregnant cousin, was questioned extensively by police about the shootings of the two officers. But police have not charged him in the killings of the officers and would not say why they believe he is connected. Petty said only that Caldwell “didn’t give us what we hoped to get from him,” and added that he remains in the pool of suspects.

Burrell, a Compton native, and MacDonald, a reserve officer about to enter the police academy in San Jose, were killed Feb. 22. Witnesses saw the officers pull over a red pickup truck about 11:15 p.m., police said.

The officers never made contact with the dispatcher after the stop, leading investigators to believe that they knew the suspects. Officers are advised by the department to call a police dispatcher and report the vehicle’s license plate number.

The occupants left the truck and a partial pat-down search was conducted before one suspect pulled a gun and fired. Burrell and MacDonald, who were wearing bulletproof vests, fell to the ground. One suspect then fired several bullets into the officers’ heads.

The crime devastated the close-knit department. But on Monday night, colleagues of the slain officers re-enacted it stoically and without tears.

A red pickup truck owned by a Compton police officer stood in for the suspects’ vehicle, and two uniformed officers in a police car posed as MacDonald and Burrell. The witnesses--police sources counted about six of them--fearfully drew their jackets across their faces to shield themselves from identification and possible retaliation as investigators shuttled them past the crime scene in an attempt to revisit their original vantage points.

As some 30 bystanders vied with reporters for a better view, the officers “detained” their mock suspect, now against the driver’s side of the truck, now against the rear end.

But it was unclear by the evening’s end how productive the exercise had been.

“You have to keep in mind that some witnesses were quite shaken,” said Compton Police Sgt. Reggie Wright. “We still have a ways to go. But we’re a little clearer now.”