70-Year-Old Man Killed in Arson Fire : Violence: Police had warned Haud Grooms to leave the house, which was the site of a weekend gang shooting. Officials say the firebombing was in retaliation.

Despite threats from gang members and warnings from police, a 70-year-old man returned to his home after a weekend gang shooting, only to die early Monday when the house was firebombed.

Police believe that the arson attack in the 1800 block of South Wilton Place in South-Central Los Angeles was in retaliation for a shootout at the same house Saturday night that left one man dead and another wounded.

Haud Grooms, who had lived in the neighborhood of well-kept, two-story houses for almost 25 years, died of smoke inhalation in a second-floor bedroom of the yellow stucco house shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, police said.

A Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a rear window, one witness said.

About 20 firefighters took less than 30 minutes to put out the blaze, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said. The Fire Department estimated that the blaze caused about $100,000 in damage.

Police believe that the arsonist’s intended target was Darren Sloan, a 24-year-old gang member who had been shot in the leg during a gun battle in front of the house about 7 p.m. Saturday. John Boddie, 22, was killed in the shootout, Officer Bruce Cardenas said.

Sloan has been in custody since the shooting, but his family and Grooms had been advised by police to leave the house after repeated threats by gang members that “they were going to burn them out,” Cardenas said.

Sloan’s family had gone to stay with relatives, said Alfred Young, who lives next door to the firebombed house. Grooms, who has no known survivors, went with the Sloans for a day.

Grooms “was a lovely man,” Young said. “He was a real good man; everybody loved him. He lived with me 24 years” before he moved next door.

Young runs a board-and-care house catering to county residents on general relief and Supplemental Security Income.

Grooms had returned Sunday evening despite the police warnings because “he didn’t like where he was staying,” said another neighbor, who did not want to be identified.

The neighbor, who said he was a friend, described Grooms as a good man who “minded his own business and sipped a little wine every day.”

“It seems like this always happens to the people who are doing nothing to no one,” he said.