LOS ANGELES —  The community solidarity that followed the killing of high school football star Jamiel Shaw Jr. did not last.

A prosecutor has been pulled from the case after clashing with Shaw's parents, who are demanding hate-crime charges against the suspect, believed to belong to a violent Hispanic gang. And the family is fighting suggestions that an affinity for a rival gang was what led to Shaw's slaying March 2.

At the heart of the friction is the polarizing issue of race in a city known for its diversity of cultures. Shaw, 17, was black; prosecutors say the man charged with killing him, Pedro Espinoza, is in the country illegally.

Shaw's family is fighting for passage of "Jamiel's Law," which would overturn a long-standing rule preventing Los Angeles police from inquiring about suspects' immigration status. It has not been welcomed in all corners; opponents say it could deter illegal immigrants from reporting crimes.

The rift between the Shaws and the district attorney's office was exposed last week when Jamiel Shaw Sr., 47, and his ex-wife Anita Shaw, 43, met with District Attorney Steve Cooley to complain about Michele Hanisee, the prosecutor on the case.

Jamiel Shaw said Hanisee pressured him to stop pushing for the law and threatened to depict their son as a gang member unless they dropped demands that she prosecute the case as a hate crime.

"Basically, she came across as being pro-immigration," Shaw said Tuesday. "She was definitely putting pressure on the family."

The district attorney's office denied Shaw's claims, but spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said Hanisee was taken off the case because it "was a marriage that wasn't working."

Hanisee referred questions to Gibbons, who said the prosecutor had no reason to pressure the Shaws or to claim their son was a gang member.

Two new prosecutors were assigned to the case, and investigators are taking a fresh look at whether hate crimes could be charged. An earlier initial investigation found no evidence to warrant the charge, Gibbons said.

Prosecutors say Espinoza, believed to be a member of the 18th Street gang, drove to Shaw's neighborhood and shot him after asking him a question about his gang affiliation. Espinoza had been released from jail on weapons charges just one day before the shooting.

Espinoza's attorney Jorge Guzman declined to comment. A preliminary hearing is set for Thursday.

Politicians, residents and activists rallied around Shaw's family. Shaw was a standout on the gridiron and appeared destined for a sports scholarship at a top university. His mother was in the Army serving in Iraq.

The mayor and other officials attended his funeral and placed a plaque on the spot where Shaw was gunned down.

At a vigil two nights after his son's killing, Shaw Sr. appealed for calm and said he did not believe his son was killed because of the color of his skin. That changed, he said, when he learned Espinoza was in the country illegally and had served time in jail, where hostilities between black and Hispanic inmates run deep.

"He was killed because he was black," Shaw said Tuesday. "A lot of these killings in LA have been disguised as gang because they don't want the racial part to come out, the black and brown problem."

County prosecutors have previously pressed high-profile hate crime cases, and federal authorities recently accused members of a South Los Angeles Hispanic gang of targeting blacks. But the degree to which violence in the city is race-related remains a sensitive issue among local officials.

Police Chief William Bratton recently reacted angrily at a news conference when asked whether a spate of shootings was race-related. He softened his rhetoric after some black residents criticized him for not taking their fears seriously, but still points to statistics showing the vast majority of homicides do not cross racial lines.

Police say Shaw was never in a gang, but a gang expert sparked an angry reaction on talk radio and elsewhere by saying Shaw may have been targeted for identifying in some way with a rival gang in his neighborhood.

Alex Alonso posted an article on a Web site that quoted comments reportedly written by Shaw on his MySpace.com page that included insulting remarks about the 18th Street and Crip gangs. Alonso also said Shaw was wearing a red belt when he was shot, a color associated with the Blood gang.

Homicide detective Frank Carillo, who is overseeing the investigation, said none of those things would make Shaw a gang member.

Most kids growing up in neighborhoods like Jamiel's would know gang members. That in itself does not mean someone has a gang affiliation, or else "that would make every student at a school a gang associate," he said.

Bloodhound, a self-described nonviolent member of the LA Bloods who declined to give his real name for fear of reprisals, said three Blood gangs are active in Jamiel's neighborhood. For kids growing up in the area, it's almost impossible to avoid interacting with gang members on some level.

"Younger cats his own age that are from one of the Blood gangs would have applied a little peer pressure," Bloodhound said.

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