DAD SUES OFFICIALS AFTER SLAYING OF YOUNG DRUG INFORMANT

ESTHERVILLE, Iowa - Gregory "Sky" Erickson got to know Luis Lua in
autumn 1996. Both were freshmen at Estherville High School, even
though Lua was 20 years old.

Less than a year later in the dank basement of an abandoned farmhouse,
Lua folded a pillow around a .38-caliber handgun, held the weapon to
the back of Erickson's head, and fired.

As Erickson crumpled to the floor, Lua began kicking him. Four other
members of Lua's drug gang, all young men from Estherville, a
northwest Iowa town of 6,700, lined up to consummate their agreement
that each would fire a shot into Erickson, himself a drug dealer with
debts to Lua.

Erickson died at age 15, bound and gagged with red bandanas, symbols
of Lua's band of drug pushers and users.

It was the kind of callous drug violence usually set in the back
streets of indifferent cities, not outwardly placid county-seat towns
such as Estherville, a meat-packing center and a hub for the doctors,
lawyers and merchants who tend to the needs of area farmers.

Erickson's killing set off a string of trials and negotiations in
which nine people, all in their teens and 20s, pleaded or were found
guilty for their roles in the boy's kidnapping and murder on that
summer night 21 months ago.

Now a new chapter has begun to unfold.

A federal court lawsuit brought by Erickson's father, Gregory Erickson
Sr., 42, of Estherville, argues that his son was placed in harm's way
by law-enforcement officials who recruited the boy as an informant
despite his youth, emotional instability and his own drug use that may
have impaired his judgment.

"One of the big issues is whether you can ever make a child an
informant," says Roxanne Conlin of Des Moines, a lawyer for Gregory
Erickson.

The lawsuit names as defendants nine prosecutors, police officers and
sheriff's deputies, and the three counties and two towns that employed
them.

Lawyers inside and outside the controversy say the lawsuit, which
seeks unspecified damages, raises largely unsettled questions of law.

"I've never seen anything about the responsibility of law-enforcement
authorities to their informants," said James Tomkovicz, a criminal-law
professor at the University of Iowa. "I think there is very little
precedent."

Officials say the boy was killed because he owed $1,400 in drug debts
to Lua and another Estherville trafficker. The lawsuit maintains the
boy's role as an informant played a part in his death.

The suit says Erickson was put hopelessly behind on his drug debts in
December 1996 when he was arrested in nearby Milford for drug
possession. In exchange for leniency, he provided a substantial amount
of information about the drug trade in Estherville.

At that time, the lawsuit says, authorities confiscated $700 in cash
along with the unsold portion of a pound of marijuana that Erickson
had obtained on credit from Lua, making it impossible for the boy to
meet his "criminal obligations" and placing him in danger. Soon
thereafter, the lawsuit says, Erickson began receiving death threats.

Clay County Atty. Mike Zenor, one of the defendants in the suit, said
the lawsuit will be vigorously contested. He said there is no evidence
that Erickson was killed for any reason other than his drug debts to
Lua and another drug dealer implicated in the slaying.

The lawsuit says Erickson had another scrape with the law about two
weeks before he was killed. In this episode, Erickson, with his
father's approval, agreed to try to ferret out more information about
the area drug trade.

The agreement, the suit contends, was based on coercion and required
Erickson's ever deeper involvement in the drug community at a time
when his own drug use clouded his ability "to exercise prudent
judgment regarding matters of his own personal safety and
protection."

"In lieu of getting sent away for a year or two, Sky had to do as he
was asked," his father said. "It necessitated his getting down and
dirty with people who would not hesitate to do him serious harm."

The lawsuit also says that as an informant, Erickson was entitled to
protection from law-enforcement officials, who were well aware of the
death threats.

But Zenor said he is not aware of any evidence suggesting that any of
the people charged in the slaying knew Erickson had cooperated with
police.

In a statement given after he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree
murder, Thomas Mann, 17, one of Erickson's assailants, was asked
specifically by Zenor if any of the assailants had on the night of the
killing discussed the possibility of Erickson's being a snitch.

"Not that I know of," Mann replied.

At another point, Zenor asked: "So it was all about
money?"

"Yeah," Mann answered.

Lua confessed to the shooting in a deal that allowed him to escape the
possibility of the death penalty.

A recitation of Lua's involvement prepared by federal prosecutors said
he was upset about the money Erickson owed him and also suspected that
Erickson had "snitched" on the gang. But before signing the statement,
Lua crossed out the sentence about suspecting that Erickson was an
informant.

Stephen Rapp, U.S. attorney for northern Iowa, said prosecutors put
together the statement based on their understanding of what had
happened. Rapp said Lua "obviously disagreed" with the language saying
he suspected Erickson of acting as an informant.

On the night he died, Erickson was beaten twice before he was taken to
the abandoned farmhouse and killed.

Lua ordered Erickson to face the wall and shot him in the back of the
head. Then Ryan Wedebrand, 17, fired the gun into the midsection of
the fallen Erickson. Mann then attempted to fire into Erickson's body
in accordance with the pact that all five of the gang members present
would shoot Erickson. But the gun jammed when Mann pulled the trigger,
and no one could fix the weapon. Erickson's body, charred by a fire
set in an attempt to destroy evidence, was found eight days later.

The tenth person charged in Erickson's killing, Ricardo Castillo, has
not been captured. Authorities say Castillo was the main supplier for
Lua's drug gang. Lua said that when he shot Erickson, he was under
pressure from Castillo for drug debts caused by his inability to
collect what Erickson owed him.