By Stephen Oduntan
Contributing Writer
SOUTH LOS ANGELES — Under a sweltering afternoon sun, protesters gathered outside a gas station Oct. 5, urging motorists to take their business elsewhere after a Black mother accused a station worker of pepper-spraying her and her 16-year-old daughter during a confrontation that began over a handful of change.
Across the driveway at All Star Gas, the station manager came outside to face protesters, at times engaging them through a megaphone. He offered an apology — but also pushed back against their account of the incident.
“We want to apologize,” said the manager, who declined to give his name. “We want to correct our wrongs, make them right.”
But he insisted the Sept. 30 confrontation was not racially motivated and said any use of force would have been in self-defense.
The conflicting accounts have turned what began as a dispute over a few dollars at the gas station at 3227 W. 54th St. into a social media controversy, with videos of the dispute drawing thousands of views on social media and fueling repeated demonstrations and calls for residents to boycott the business.
The mother, whose name The Wave is withholding at her request, said the confrontation began when she brought a collection of quarters into the station to purchase gasoline.
She said she initially believed she had handed a worker $9, but after returning to her vehicle realized the amount was $12 and went back to correct the discrepancy.
The disagreement escalated, and the mother alleges the worker eventually pepper-sprayed her and discharged pepper spray into her vehicle, where her teenage daughter was sitting.
“You knew my daughter was in the car,” the mother said during the Oct. 5 demonstration.
She said her daughter had not participated in the confrontation and posed no threat.
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that officers responded to the station at about 10:22 a.m. Sept. 30, the day of the confrontation that later sparked the protests. The call was initially reported as an ambulance battery, and a police report was taken for unlawful use of pepper spray, according to LAPD Media Relations. Police information available Oct. 7 did not indicate any reported injuries, arrests or citations.
The station manager disputed key portions of the mother’s account.
“No child got hurt or got maced,” he said, adding that the business would never intentionally hurt a child.
At the same time, he declined to give his own detailed account of what happened, saying the matter was under police investigation. Asked what the mother had done that would have necessitated self-defense, he declined to answer.
“I don’t want to speak on this,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that the encounter escalated.
“The situation got out of hand,” he said. “Things happen, misunderstandings happen. One thing can lead to another.”
Five days later, the dispute had spilled onto the sidewalk outside the station, where members and supporters of the Africa Town Coalition carried Pan-African flags while organizer Billion Godsun addressed the business through a bullhorn.
Protesters approached motorists entering the station, told them about the allegations and urged them to buy their gasoline elsewhere. Some motorists turned away. Others continued into the station.
Kevin Ross, a community advocate who joined the demonstration, said he showed motorists video of the controversy on his phone and estimated that he persuaded about 10 customers to leave.
“It’s my disappointment in the community,” Ross said of those who continued patronizing the business.
The station manager disputed suggestions that the boycott was hurting business.
“Honestly, it seems like it’s the same,” he said. “I don’t think it’s really done anything.”
Then he added: “Honestly, it seems like it kind of boosted it. I’m seeing a lot of new faces I’ve never seen.”
Videos circulating online have also drawn attention to confrontations during earlier demonstrations at the station.
Footage from an earlier demonstration shows a man standing inside the entrance holding a baseball bat as protesters gather outside. The station manager said the man was not an employee.
Another video appears to show a man during a separate confrontation extending his arms toward another person while holding a dark object that protesters described as a firearm. The recording is not clear enough to independently determine whether the object is a gun. The manager said the man depicted in the video was not associated with the business.
The controversy comes as All Star Gas & Smoke Shop and two related companies face a separate civil lawsuit alleging violence at the same location. Raymundo Antonio Alfaro alleges that in November 2024, individuals associated with the business pepper-sprayed and stabbed him as he walked away following a dispute.
The complaint, dated Aug. 6, names All Star Gas, Crenshaw Oil LLC and CJT Oil Inc. as defendants. The allegations have not been proven in court.
As the Oct. 5 demonstration continued, protesters and the station manager repeatedly talked past one another.
“It was not a racial thing,” the manager said during one exchange. “It was self-defense.”
Protesters rejected that explanation and pressed for a direct apology to the mother. The manager offered a broader apology for negative experiences people may have had at the station while continuing to deny that the Sept. 30 confrontation was racially motivated.
“We want to make things right with her, squash things with her,” he said.
In a social-media post following the demonstration, Brandi Kane, who said she previously lived in the neighborhood and had been treated politely at the station, said her own experience did not change her support for the boycott.
“They were polite to me, but at this point, that does not matter,” Kane said.
She said the campaign was intended to exert economic pressure rather than provoke violence.
“This ain’t about a riot or no vandalism or trashing their place or nothing like that,” Kane said. “We’re not calling for no violence, but we know our spending power.”
At times during the demonstration, tempers flared and arguments broke out among people gathered outside the station. But the discussion eventually shifted from confrontation toward an attempt to resolve the dispute.
Representatives of the two sides agreed to meet at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 7 to discuss the mother’s allegations and whether an agreement could be reached. But the station representative did not appear.
Godsun said he and other community members waited at the agreed-upon location before receiving online reports that the gas station had apparently been robbed. He said they wondered whether that might explain the representative’s absence but had received no communication from the station.
The station representative later called Godsun but did not directly explain why he had missed the meeting, Godsun said. Instead, he pointed to recently posted surveillance footage of the Sept. 30 confrontation in defending the station’s account of what happened.
Godsun disputed that the footage supported the station’s version of events, saying the video — recorded from the station’s surveillance monitors and circulated online with commentary — ends before the point at which the mother alleges she and her daughter were pepper-sprayed.
With the Oct. 7 meeting failing to take place, Godsun said the coalition intends to continue pressing the issue. Organizers plan to raise their concerns Oct. 10 at a Park Mesa Heights Community Council meeting.
“The community’s going to have to press forward,” Godsun said.
Stephen Oduntan is a freelance writer for Wave Newspapers.
