Robber’s Gunshot Leaves Family’s Lives Shattered

The gunman who left Martin Enrique Norman dying on a downtown Los Angeles sidewalk is eluding justice.

But the slain taxi driver’s close-knit family can’t escape the gaping hole torn in their lives.

Norman, a university-educated former high school teacher from Mexico, was not just the household’s chief breadwinner. He was a music maker, a dreamer and a cultural adventurer to his wife and three sons.

“There’s no adjusting to [the loss]. There’s no getting used to it. There’s just living with it, I guess,� said Norman’s 22-year-old son, Bogarth, who recently quit school and returned home to Long Beach to help support his mother and younger siblings.

The Labor Day story of an immigrant cabby cut down by seemingly random street violence momentarily caught the eye of the news media and the public.

It was before the deaths of six people in a bandit cab in Compton focused attention on illegal taxis.

This was the story of a legitimate, hard-working cabby as victim. And it had a ready-made angle. Norman was celebrating his 42nd birthday. He had left a family gathering and headed to the streets to earn extra cash to help cover the rent.

A few hours later, he lay fatally wounded at 8th and Flower streets on the southern cusp of the central city office district. His cab was missing.

Nearly three months later, the camera crews are gone. Homicide detectives have little to go on. And Norman’s wife and boys--two of them still in high school--are going through the holidays, trying to regain their emotional and financial footing.

“The damage done to the family . . . how can you really relate to that?� said Al Marengo, an LAPD Central Division detective working the case.

Rita Norman, who came to the Los Angeles area with her husband and young sons 11 years ago, could only pause briefly to grieve. She had to return to her job as a gas station cashier. “I have to feed my family,� she said, seated in the family’s snug, second-story apartment over a busy street east of downtown Long Beach.

She worries about the blow her sons have taken. She tries to counsel them: pull together, fight depression and work hard.

It’s the example set by her husband, she says, who typically worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week carrying fares. Only in the months just before his death had Martin Norman begun feeling secure enough to take Sundays off.

He enjoyed his job and never had trouble on the streets before.

The family only learned after his killing how much he meant to some of his regular customers. One elderly woman sent a postcard saying that he was the only driver patient enough to wait for her when she slowly made her way down from her apartment.

He didn’t mind waiting for fares, his wife said. It gave him more time for his passion: reading. He had a voracious appetite for the written word. Newspapers, fiction, science, history and especially novels by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He pushed his sons to read. He also plotted out vacations to include trips to museums. “All kinds of museums,� his wife said.

Norman hoped to one day have his college degree from Mexico certified in the United States, and possibly return to teaching.

But before he was killed, his main focus was what his wife calls “our last dream.� He wanted to buy a house, and frequently took Rita on treks through Long Beach and Lakewood to see where the family might settle.

“The dream’s still there,� said Bogarth, the oldest son trying to fill some of the space where his father used to be.

Measured, serious and young, Bogarth is suddenly saddled with middle-aged obligations. His voice wavers slightly as he takes stock of his and his family’s new situation.

“Everything’s working out fine,� he assures a visitor. “I just feel there’s a lot more pressure, more responsibility on my shoulders.�

He had served three years in the Navy, was living in San Diego and was just beginning his own career when word came his father had been killed. He quickly resigned from active military reserve status, gave up his apartment and withdrew from courses to be an emergency medical technician.

Now he is back sharing the family apartment and has taken a job in the dispatch office at Long Beach Yellow Cab, where his father was purchasing shares in three cabs. In addition to helping pay the bills, Bogarth is trying to learn the taxi business and maintain his father’s stake in the cab operation.

He’s also committed to seeing his 16-year-old brother, who took his father’s death particularly hard, through college. And he hopes to return to his own education locally.

For now, the family must get through the holidays and put the finishing touches on Martin Norman’s grave.

Last week, a friend helped the family finally acquire the inscribed headstone they wanted.

Only a Small Insurance Policy

Holiday gatherings with friends, uncles and cousins will be tough. Martin Norman always was a central attraction, playing Mexican standards and rock ‘n’ roll oldies on the guitar. “He was pretty much the only one that knew how,� said Bogarth.

Another twist to the tragedy: The cab company had not finalized a life insurance plan for drivers at the time of Norman’s killing. One has since been offered that pays $100,000 in death benefits, said Mitchell Rouse, the company’s chairman.

Norman’s family will receive about a third of that amount from a cab company contribution and a drivers union insurance policy, Rouse said. Donations of a few thousand dollars have also helped with expenses, Bogarth said.

Investigators continue to work on leads, but admit that the case is going slowly. There is no evidence yet that Norman’s killing is related to a rash of recent taxi driver assaults. A cabdriver was shot and killed in Hollywood last week during a robbery, authorities said.

Police theorize that Norman was flagged down by a fare in Long Beach after 7 p.m., roughly an hour after he left his wife and family celebrating his birthday at a Labor Day get-together with friends.

He apparently dropped the passenger at 8th and Flower, near an old hotel, about 9 p.m., Det. Marengo said. Norman got out of his cab for some reason, possibly in an attempt to collect the fare, and was shot, collapsing to the sidewalk.

The gunfire echoing through the deserted downtown streets brought out several witnesses. But most only caught glimpses of a man--described as a clean-cut Latino in his late 20s or early 30s--speeding off in Norman’s cab. The car was found the next day a few blocks away.

Investigators do have one potential suspect, Marengo said, but some witnesses are being uncooperative. Investigators are hoping for a break, and have asked the City Council to offer a $25,000 reward in the case.

Rita Norman doubts the investigation is going anywhere.

She says that she has drawn comfort elsewhere, from dozens of cards and phone calls the family received from friends, her husband’s customers and total strangers.

Fingering a spiral-bound log of those who offered assistance and messages of sympathy, she said the outpouring made her feel she married “a man who was really important� to many people she’ll never know. “I don’t feel really alone.�