A memorial was held Monday at the same Compton location where 65-year-old pastor Joe Moore was fatally shot a day earlier.
Moore, a father and grandfather, was the co-pastor at Upper Room Christian Church in Compton. He had just finished teaching Sunday school, when witnesses say he was walking over to his car on Dwight Avenue and Compton Boulevard — holding his bible in one hand and a cane in the other.
Moore was shot just before noon, and was suffering from at least one gunshot wound to the upper torso when deputies arrived, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department said.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Officials say they don’t yet have a motive but they believe Moore was targeted.
“It’s senseless. It’s a coward move,” his son Damar Moore says. “I just don’t understand.”
Family members say they are heartbroken over the loss of a grandfather who devoted his life to them and to God.
“This is a hard pill to swallow,” Joe’s daughter Daney Moore says. “This is one of them things that we would never expect … He just finished Sunday school, walked across the street and this is what happened to him.”
Daney adds that the family just buried an uncle on Friday and a young female cousin Saturday. “And now this happens to my dad on Sunday,” she said.
The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with burial costs.
“It’s affecting me a lot because he taught me a lot,” grandson Dishay Banks says. “It’s just hard he had to go out this way.”
Authorities are looking for a gray or dark colored sedan in connection to the shooting.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling “Crime Stoppers” at 800-222-TIPS (8477) or by visiting lacrimestoppers.org.