Debra Taylor and her 10-year-old son, Brandon, visit the grave of her mother, Lillie Belle Allen, in Aiken. Ms. Allen was killed when she stepped out of a stalled car in a white gang's neighborhood in the midst of the 1969 race riots in York, Pa. SPECIAL

''All they can say is they are sorry and forgive me. And I have done that. I am not angry,'' said Debra Allen Taylor, an Aiken mother and operations specialist at Savannah River Site. ''I was angry. I really was - for years. But I'm not now.''

More than anything, Ms. Taylor is upset with the parents of the men accused in the slaying - for breeding hatred into their children.

''The grown-ups who made these young men, who put fuel on this fire, this anger, this rage, they caused an innocent women to die,'' she said. ''Hatred - you are not born with that. It's taught. So those people who knew better incited a rage in the rest of them, and they just followed.''

Ms. Taylor was 11 the day her mother, Lillie Belle Allen, was shot in York on the fourth day of rioting.She got out of the stalled car in the neighborhood of a white gang, waved her arms and yelled, ''Don't shoot!'' before dying in a hail of gunfire, prosecutors said.

On Thursday, York Mayor Charlie Robertson, 69, was arrested and charged with Ms. Allen's death. Prosecutors said Mr. Robertson, who was then a police officer, handed out bullets to a group of white people and told them to kill black people. The mayor, who denies involvement in the shooting, is one of six men charged in the attack.

The riots began after a white gang member shot and injured a black man in York. More than 60 people were injured, 100 people were arrested and entire city blocks were burned.

A white rookie police officer was killed along with Ms. Allen, a 27-year-old mother of two visiting from Aiken. Ms. Allen's other child, Michael Allen, resides in North Augusta.

It began as a summer vacation for Ms. Allen, her two children, her little sister and her parents. The group planned a trip to York for a day or two, visiting a friend before driving to Brooklyn.

But they got caught up in York, a city filled with hate, and in a chain of race riots that swept through many Northern cities in the '60s. On July 21, 1969, while Ms. Allen's daughter, Debra, waited at home with others, her mother joined a group of four adults in a fateful trip to the grocery store.

Ms. Taylor recalls the sound of fireworks in the neighborhood that night. The sound seemed to last forever, she said.

But she knew something was wrong when the car came up the street with a loud screech on the pavement and windows rolled down.

''I realized that the sounds that we heard were shots,'' Ms. Taylor said. ''And that's why the car windows weren't really rolled down, they were really shot out. The tires were sounding like that because they were all flat.

''I was just in a stupor. I just could not believe something like that. What I thought was a festive noise turned out to be tragic noise.''

Ms. Taylor found out later that night that her mother had died.

Thursday's arrest of Mr. Robertson in connection with her mother's slaying has brought national attention and daily, if not hourly, calls from the media to Ms. Taylor's Aiken home.

Ms. Taylor said the mayor should step down from office instead of serving while he awaits trial.

''No one who admits that they helped boost a rage like that should be in charge of anything,'' she said. ''He keeps saying, 'That's old and we should forget about it. It's political.' There's nothing on the human side that he has said yet, except trying to save himself.''

Although the arrests came 31 years late, Ms. Taylor said she is pleased and plans to attend the trials.

''Maybe we can come to closure at some point,'' she said.

Associated Press reports were used in this article.

Reach Greg Rickabaugh at (803) 648-1395 or greg.rickabaugh@augustachronicle.com.