Bullets Shatter a Sailor’s Family

Osiel Hipolito was born and raised in Compton, staying clear of the gang troubles that have long plagued his hometown. As a teenager he joined the Explorer’s program at the local Los Angeles County sheriff’s station. At 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served a tour in Iraq. He married young, a girl who had lived down the street from his parents’ house.

At 20, he was about to be a father for a second time. Hipolito was shot and killed Saturday at a swap meet mall in East Rancho Dominguez, across from the park from where Venus and Serena Williams learned to play tennis on public courts.

The gunman also fired twice into the abdomen of Hipolito’s eight months pregnant wife, wounding her and the unborn child.

Unlike most homicides, this one was captured start to finish on surveillance cameras. But so far sheriff’s investigators say that, despite releasing images of the suspects to the media, they haven’t had a single call or lead.

“I need justice for my son,” Jorge Hipolito said at a news conference on Thursday at the Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide division in Commerce, where Hipolito’s family pleaded for help finding their son’s killer.

The crime touched a nerve for sheriff’s officials, who have seen an upturn this year in homicides in the areas they patrol.

“This is as flagrant an example of disregard for life that I can think of,” said Capt. Ray Peavy, who heads the sheriff’s homicide division. “This poor guy had been over fighting for his country and was about ready to go back over for another tour of duty, and you would think he would be comfortable in his own neighborhood, and this is what he has, this is what his family has to live with.”

At least 48 people have been killed within Compton’s city limits this year, the most recent a 14-year-old shot multiple times last week while walking on a city street. At least four others, including Hipolito, have been shot dead within blocks of the city line.

Sheriff’s officials estimate more than 90% of the killings are gang-related, although, as Hipolito’s homicide illustrates, that does not mean investigators believe all victims have gang ties.

Hipolito, his wife and his 16-year-old brother had been looking at CDs, passing the hour it would take for their car stereo to be repaired. It was shortly after 5:15 p.m. The sun was still bright outside.

In the seconds before the brief shuffle and shooting, sheriff’s officials said, two assailants had asked the brothers: Where are you from, what gang? The Hipolitos said they were from nowhere, no gang. Osiel Hipolito, sheriff’s investigators said, told the men: I’m in the U.S. Navy.

“My son he goes to look for CDs and T-shirt. Somebody asks my son -- “ his father said, before tears broke up his thoughts. Trying to finish his account of what happened, Jorge Hipolito continued: “And my son he say --” before his voice choked with emotion again. “Right now I have too much pain in my heart.”

Sheriff’s officials said the Hipolitos had no connection to any gang activity and were simply caught in the wrong place. The brother was also wounded in the shooting, by a bullet deputies believe passed through his older brother before shattering his arm.

Pictures from the store show the suspects approach Hipolito and his family from behind. In one frame, the shooter, wearing a dark shirt, appears to throw a punch at Hipolito, who appears to push back. At that point the other suspect, wearing a light T-shirt, appears to start punching Hipolito. Then the gunman starts shooting with a semiautomatic weapon, first at Hipolito, who falls to the ground, and then into the abdomen of his wife, who is standing in the aisle.

The two assailants had been in the store about two minutes before the confrontation, deputies said.

“Is there a right answer to the question: ‘Where are you from?’ ” asked Det. Kent Wegener, one of the lead investigators on the case. “I don’t know. They said they were from nowhere, and look at where it got them.”

Peavy, called the suspects “two animals in search of a victim.”

“After he shot [Hipolito], they weren’t satisfied with that,” Peavy said of the gunman and his accomplice. “He takes aim at the eight-month pregnant woman and shoots her twice in the stomach. That baby did survive, a little girl. That child not even born yet was a victim of gang violence.”

“What we hope is someone in the community -- we know that people out there know who these people are -- calls us so we can take them off the street.”

Hipolito’s extended family said the shooting left them stunned and sickened. Jorge Hipolito said he was grateful his wife offered to watch their toddler grandson before the others left for the store, grateful that the boy was safe.

His son Osiel, he said, “had respect for everybody. Never, never was he in trouble.”

Hipolito and his wife were visiting from San Diego. He was on leave from service on the dock landing ship Germantown, which landed Marines and equipment in the Arabian Gulf as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

His family said the couple and their 1 1/2 -year-old son often made the trip to the Los Angeles area to visit with family. Hipolito was due to ship back to the Middle East early next year.

“They were very happy,” said Alfonso Jauregui, 36, the uncle of Hipolito’s wife, Lizbeth. “They had a lot of plans, for the future, for his babies.... Unfortunately it happened to us, and it could happen to anybody.”

At the hospital, his niece delivered by emergency cesarean section a daughter named Lynette who weighed more than 6 pounds. Family members say it is a name the couple had settled on together.

Lynette already has had surgery to repair the wound to her leg. Family members said the newborn, her mother and 16-year old uncle, who needed surgery to repair his shattered arm, are in stable condition.

“It’s so hard to express what it’s like seeing them happy one day and the next day he’s dead and she’s in the hospital,” said Lizbeth’s mother, Bertha Valdivia. “Why them? I mean why them?”

Valdivia said her daughter “saw everything.”

“When she realized she was shot, she said she sat down and she told him ‘Osiel, I’m hit, I’m hit,’ and that’s when he ran and sat beside her. And she could see his blood and she said: ‘Please don’t leave us, please don’t leave us.’ ”

Valdivia said the doctors advised her not to tell her daughter that Hipolito had died until she had time to recover from her surgery.

In the first days after the assault, Valdivia said, her daughter believed everyone had made it through with their lives.

Once she was told Hipolito had been dead on arrival at the hospital, Valdivia said her daughter “realized she had watched him take his last breath next to her.”