AFTER THE RIOTS : Suspect in Riot Death Surrenders to Police : Violence: Man turns self in after picture is broadcast on TV. Victim, a passenger in a car, had been recovering from a previous shooting.

Shortly after his picture was shown on local news broadcasts, a man wanted in the riot-related shooting death of Shirley Blood’s oldest son gave himself up to police.

Blood appeared surprised Friday when she learned from a reporter that Akim D. Gilmore, 18, had walked into the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division and surrendered at 8:40 Thursday night.

But she did not smile and she did not cry.

“I didn’t know that, but I’m just glad they caught him,” Blood said quietly as she sat in the living room of her small South-Central apartment. “I want to know why it happened. I don’t have bitter thoughts about the man. I’m not angry. I’m sure it was an accident. But I still want to know why it happened.”

Blood’s son, Alfred V. Miller, 32, was fatally wounded in the neck May 1 at 7:30 p.m. as he rode in a car at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Cimarron Street, police said.

Gilmore had been identified during a Thursday news conference as one of the suspects sought in five riot-related murders, Lt. Rich Molony said.

“The information we heard is that Gilmore’s mother saw him on television, called him and convinced him to turn himself in,” Molony said.

He said Gilmore fired several shots at the car in which Miller was riding as it pulled into a liquor store parking lot.

Miller, who was wearing a partial body cast because of injuries from a previous gang-related shooting, was reclining in the car’s front seat and probably was not seen by Gilmore, Molony said.

“Gilmore was probably shooting at a car he recognized, or at the driver of the car,” he said. “Miller just happened to get shot in the neck” by a bullet that first pierced the vehicle.

The driver of the car, a recent parolee concerned about being connected with the shooting, drove Miller back to his mother’s house in the 6400 block of South Van Ness Avenue, Molony said.

“I was surprised to see him because they had been gone only 10 minutes,” Blood said. “His friend drove up and said my son was sick. Then he said that Alfred had been shot. I could see the blood trickling down his neck.”

Because of Miller’s body cast, it took three men to remove Miller from the car and carry him into Blood’s living room, she said. Paramedics took him to Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:19 p.m., police said.

When paramedics arrived at Blood’s residence, the driver of the car, who had given Blood a phony name, drove away, Molony said. But police were able to track him down, and he identified Gilmore, the detective said. Police declined to identify the man, calling him a “confidential witness.”

Police later served a search warrant at what they thought was Gilmore’s address, but decided not to search the premises after his grandparents said he had moved out long ago, Molony said.

“They said they had tried to straighten him out for a long time and had been unsuccessful, so they had asked him to leave,” he said of the grandparents.

Gilmore is scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

Since the killing, Blood, 54, has been grief-stricken and has not returned to her job as a custodian with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“I’ve just been laying here, sitting here, just thinking, ever since it happened,” said Blood. “I’ll do a little something, and then I’ll be reminded of Alfred.

“I think, maybe I should have made him stay home. I should not have let him go out. Maybe he would still be here.”

She described her son, the oldest of five children, as a pleasant, happy man. He had moved back in with her after losing his job last year as a machinist at Rockwell International. She said he was shot in the knee in January when a gang member in a car opened fire at Vermont and Vernon avenues. She said that Miller was not a gang member.

Only a few days before the shooting, he had returned home after therapy at a convalescent home after knee surgery.

“Everyone thought it was better to bring him home,” she said.

“I’m really not angry,” Blood added. “But if this riot hadn’t started, maybe my son would still be here.”