Grandfathers shot down

The assailants, at least two men, showed up at Jesse’s Auto Sales in East Los Angeles around lunchtime. They quickly hustled two salesmen, both grandfathers well known in the neighborhood, into a garage with a cracked concrete floor.

The gunmen then shot the two men at close range before escaping with two cars from the lot.

“Two older men, just working, taken to the back and executed,” said Sgt. Richard Garcia, a homicide investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It appears that robbery was the motive, he said.

On Tuesday, a bullet hole about the size of a lopsided quarter on the stucco wall of the business gave testimony to the killings the day before.

The shooting deaths of Arturo Saldana, 62, and Francisco Cereceres, 50, was the opening act of an especially violent Monday afternoon in East L.A. It was the first of two double homicides, within minutes and less than a mile from each other.

About 20 minutes after the salesmen were killed, two 22-year-old men were shot to death on a street just off Olympic Boulevard. The incidents were not related, authorities said. But the deaths of Saldana and Cereceres stood out because of their deliberate brutality, and because the victims did not fit the typical portrait of homicide victims.

In Norwalk on Tuesday, Saldana’s family huddled tearfully. They said even young neighborhood toughs in the East L.A. neighborhood liked him.

“After he died, some gang members came to tell me how he would help them out,” said stepdaughter Ivon Perez, 39. “My mom would pack food for him for lunch, and he would share it with them if they were hungry.”

Perez said she worried about the rough, working-class neighborhood where her father worked. But he didn’t.

“Scared of what?” he would respond, Perez recalled. “He thought people there would not harm him. He felt comfortable.”

She said Saldana would show her the garage doors in the back of the used car lot.

“See how they’re all written up?” he said, pointing to the graffiti that covered adjoining properties. “Now, look at mine.”

Saldana was proud because it was unmarred by graffiti, she said.

Angel Cano, 48, the brother-in-law of the owner of Jesse’s Auto Sales on the 5100 block of Olympic Boulevard, said the scene inside the garage after the shooting was hard to stomach.

“There was a tremendous amount of blood. Two bodies, you can imagine,” he said. “I would say there was about 5 square feet of blood, I think, or more.”

The spartan, smudged, cream-colored restroom was scarred by bullet holes, including one where a round apparently punched out of the building.

Investigators were still trying to determine how the killings took place. Cano said from what he understood, Saldana was shot first. He had known Saldana for 31 years, he said.

“He was very good to people. Very talkative,” Cano said. “He was very chatty, and funny. He liked to make people laugh.”

Cano said $800 -- rent money -- was taken from the body of Saldana. That could not be confirmed with sheriff’s investigators. Additionally, Cano said, the gunmen took a briefcase with at least $200 that belonged to Cereceres.

Information about the assailants was very hazy, in part because the only witness to come forward was a small child, Sgt. Garcia said.

For now, Garcia said, it looks like a robbery. He said there was no indication that anyone related to the business was connected to illegal activities that could have led to the killings.

A glum Jesus Gonzalez, the owner of the business, stood in the parking lot amid rows of used cars. He was doing some cleaning up before closing the business for who knows how long, he said.

“Why did they have to kill them?” he asked. “They could have tied them up until they took everything they wanted. They could have taken all the cars. But why kill them?”

He described both men as very hard working. They worked out of necessity, he said.

“What heart, huh?” Gonzalez asked sarcastically of the shooters.

Perez said her mother was overcome with grief. She and Saldana would have celebrated their 25-year wedding anniversary next month, Perez said. Instead, Saldana’s remains will be buried in his native Ensenada, she said.

Her mother and Saldana had two children together, but Perez said her stepfather made no distinction between his biological children and his three stepchildren. She said he pushed her to become a nurse and another daughter to go to college.

“He helped get us to school. Because of him I’m a nurse,” she said tearfully. “He had another daughter in college and he would say, ‘Don’t pay us rent. We’ll see how we do it. I don’t want you to work. I’ll provide the money. You get your career.’ ”

Saldana was always working, even at home, Perez said.

“That man was up at 4 a.m. He would wake up and mop the floor for mom, clean the patio, water her plants,” she said. “He did everything so my mom wouldn’t have to do too much. He said, ‘You take care of the kids. I’ll take care of the work.’ ”

But he also faced heartache. On Sunday, his 23-year-old son got out of jail after a year. That was a rare day when Saldana left work early and hurried home.

“He only got to spend one day with him before he died,” Perez said, choking up. “People need to know that he was such a good man. What consoles us is so many calls where people say, ‘God took an angel.’ He was such an outstanding person.”

Anyone with information is asked to call sheriff’s investigators at (323) 890-5500.

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hector.becerra@latimes.com