Slaying victim was weeks from college graduation

Clifton Hibbert Jr. seemed to be a young man going places. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he did well at Santa Monica High School and won a scholarship to Cal State Northridge. At 22, he was only a few weeks away from graduation. He aspired to become a lawyer.

“He was a person with integrity,” said his mother, Donna Brown. “He was compassionate. He loved his family. He was focused on his future.”

But Friday, shortly before 2 a.m., Hibbert and a friend, Kenneth Patterson, 23, were found gunned down. Police said they and two other youths had driven to an apartment complex in the 4200 block of Figueroa Street in South Los Angeles, a neighborhood of frequent drug deals and gang- related crime.

Two of the youths dropped off Hibbert and Patterson and drove around the corner to find parking, and then heard gunshots, they told police.

Police found Hibbert and Patterson shot in the head. They were pronounced dead at the scene. A police source said they may have been victims of a robbery-related homicide; an investigation is underway. “Somebody knows what happened out there,” said LAPD Cmdr. Andy Smith. “Right now it is a mystery to us.”

Hibbert’s father, mother and sister said in interviews that he had never been involved with gangs or gotten into trouble. He worked part-time as a shoe salesman at the Puma Store on the Third Street Promenade, and on weekends he helped with deliveries and accounts at his father’s ice-carving business, said Clifford Hibbert Sr., a chef at the LAX Hilton.

Brown, who said she is on disability with breast cancer, said her son had come home from his job on Friday evening, kissed her and said, “I love you; see you later,” before leaving. Hibbert had told his girlfriend, a registered nurse who was working that evening, that he and his friends were going to a party in Northridge, according to his sister, Ayanna Brown.

She said one of Hibbert’s friends had bought a new BMW, and the four youths decided to carpool to the party.

Brown said her brother had worked with at-risk children during his first years in college. “He was a young, beautiful person who had a vision,” she said. “And he was robbed of his life. My brother gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. We gave him so much love.”

According to Melvon George, a friend of the family and a student at Cal State Northridge, Hibbert had been taking a black studies course. “Only two weeks ago, we had a discussion about gangs and how they were destroying the black community,” George said.

Patterson’s family could not be reached for comment.

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margot.roosevelt@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com