Victims Came From All Walks of Life : Killings: One man stopped at a market to pick up some milk. Another was shot apparently by merchants he was trying to protect.

There were teen-agers and the elderly, the privileged and the down-and-out, felons and good Samaritans--a disparate lot all slain during the Los Angeles riots.

Among the dead was Dwight Taylor, a Cal State Long Beach basketball player during the early 1970s whose coach was the legendary Jerry Tarkanian. Taylor, who was 42, still loved to show off his ball handling to youngsters on the courts around South Los Angeles. But in recent years he had taken another trade--cutting up fish at a neighborhood market.

“Fishman,� as friends called him, was on his way to visit his estranged wife and their children on the first night of the riots. But he stopped at a supermarket at Vermont and Vernon avenues to pick up some milk and was shot in the parking lot along with two teen-agers. Their killers are still at large.

Eduardo Vela was a Mexican immigrant who ran a Japanese restaurant in Bakersfield.

Visiting Los Angeles on the day the riots broke out, Vela had car trouble on Slauson Avenue in Ladera Heights. A co-worker, Estevan Ortigoza, left the vehicle to find a telephone and while he was gone the 34-year-old Vela was shot.

“I guess the good guys always have to end up in heaven,� Ortigoza said.

Little is known about a 43-year-old woman struck on the Harbor Freeway and dragged 180 feet in a hit-and-run accident. Her name was Carol Benson, authorities said, and she lived by herself in an apartment across from a small church in South Los Angeles. No relatives claimed her body so her funeral was like those offered for all indigents--a cremation at County-USC Medical Center.

Edward Song Lee, on the other hand, received a hero’s goodby when he was laid to rest.

More than 5,000 mourners attended the funeral service for the community college student, one of dozens of Korean-American youths who assembled in armed teams to defend Koreatown businesses and residences during the height of the riots.

Lee, 18, was struck by several bullets when a firefight broke out between his armed convoy and gunmen on a roof near 3rd Street and Hobart Boulevard. As it turned out, police say, the men who shot Lee apparently were fellow Korean-Americans trying to protect their businesses.

Betty Jackson was a good Samaritan of another kind. She died while rushing to deliver some barbecued chicken to a friend before the citywide evening curfew began.

The small Toyota that Jackson and her sister were in was struck by a van at Main and 51st streets. Traffic lights were out throughout the area and investigators are trying to determine whether that was the cause of the accident that took the 56-year-old woman’s life.

“Betty was very generous,� said Ingrid Chamberlin, a relative. “Betty was like the one person you would want to win the lottery. If she’s rich, everybody’s rich. That’s the kind of person she is.�

Ira McCurry, an Army veteran, had fallen on hard times before meeting county golf course maintenance worker John Huff two years ago.

At the time, McCurry, 45, was without a home and was employed at the same golf course as part of a general relief workfare program. Huff, a black man, took McCurry, a white man, into his Watts area home. “Over time, he became a part of my family,� Huff, 50, said.

McCurry was shot to death outside Huff’s modest Avalon Boulevard home.

Another victim, Arturo Miranda, loved soccer and on April 29 had just finished a game.

On his way home with a group of friends, the 20-year-old was sitting in the back seat of a car when shots were fired at 120th Street and Central Avenue.

The shooting occurred within blocks of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center but his panicked friends did not know the area, so they rushed him to Gardena Memorial Hospital, miles away.

Miranda had arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico less than a year ago and had worked for a textile company. His co-workers raised enough money so his body could be returned to his hometown of Guerrero.

Times staff writers Victor Merina and Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.