Girl’s Mom Grateful For Cosby’s Concern Entertainer Telephones About 17-Year-Old Shooting Victim

The mother of a 17-year-old girl shot to death the same day Ennis Cosby was killed thanked Bill Cosby on Wednesday for expressing concern about her loss even as he dealt with his own.

Loretta Thomas-Davis, mother of victim Corie Williams, has received several calls from the actor, and “his sincere display of concern was comforting,” said her cousin Helen Green.

Ennis Cosby’s shooting while changing a tire Jan. 16 was one of three new homicide investigations in the city that day. Corie, a high school senior who will be buried in her graduation gown, was riding home on a public bus in the Watts area when a gang member opened fire on a rival. She was killed and a friend was wounded.

“That was my baby, my baby,” Thomas-Davis said, weeping during a family news conference in a relative’s South Central home.

Shootings claim dozens of lives each year in the gang-plagued area and receive much less publicity. But Police Chief Willie Williams drew attention to the Williams case when he told reporters on Friday that Bill Cosby had asked him about the teenager’s shooting.

In the third case, Conception Madrid, 50, was found strangled in her San Fernando Valley apartment.

All three killings are unsolved, although Cmdr. Tim McBride said hundreds of leads on the Cosby case have been pouring in. The calls have included everything from visions by psychics to solid, genuine leads, he said, declining to comment further.

Also Wednesday, the City Council approved a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Cosby’s killer. That’s in addition to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ $12,500 reward and $300,000 from two tabloids.

The government reward offers offended some relatives of other slaying victims, such as Vicky D. Lindsey, whose son was killed in an unsolved Compton shooting in November 1995.

“Cosby’s a millionaire, billionaire, whatever,” she said. “He doesn’t need that. He can set his own reward up.”