Newlywed Killed as Shootings Continue on Cedar Street

Xochitl Jimenez craved ice cream Thursday night, so her husband, Abel, took her out.

When they returned to South Cedar Street, the young newlyweds stayed in Abel’s Oldsmobile Cutlass, where they had more privacy than in the crowded apartment they shared with Xochitl’s parents and brothers and sisters.

“We had our album from the wedding, and we were looking at the pictures,” said Xochitl, who is 10 weeks’ pregnant. “We were trying to decide what names to name the baby.”

Out of the darkness, a man approached the car and asked Abel if he knew where he could buy some marijuana. When Abel answered that he was “a Christian and didn’t know,” the man pointed a gun through the partially opened window and said: “(Expletive), you’re a (expletive) Loper,” she said.

Abel pleaded with the man not to shoot, Xochitl said. She cannot remember exactly how many shots the man fired, only that he kept firing after she threw herself over her husband’s slumping body. A neighbor said she heard eight shots. Police said Abel was shot “several times in the head.”

The brutal slaying was the third apparently gang-related shooting on one block of South Cedar Street in 10 days.

- Abel was killed in virtually the same spot that his brother-in-law, Francisco Hernandez, 27, had been wounded by rifle fire from a passing car Oct. 30.

- On Oct. 25, Rogelio Moreno, 53, was shot to death a few houses away when he stepped outside during a dispute between rival gangs.

- And just minutes after Abel was slain Thursday--and just a few blocks away--two 18-year-olds, Bernardino Perez Martinez and Jose Luis Fausto, were wounded by shots fired from a passing car at Edinger Avenue and Cypress Street. No words were exchanged before that gunfire, Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Chavez said, and police do not know whether the shooting was related to gangs or to the Jimenez slaying, though small-caliber weapons were used in both shootings.

Police arrested three teen-agers Wednesday in the shooting of Hernandez and the murder of Enrique Arceo and Jesse Perez, the youths who were killed not far away on Lacy Street the night Hernandez was shot. The youths were reportedly friendly with Loper gang members.

The suspects, and two other youths arrested in other recent shootings, were members of a rival gang, but police will not say which one. “We don’t want to give them any publicity and possibly incite further shootings,” Chavez said.

Police have no suspects in the two most recent shootings. Chavez said they are increasing patrols of neighborhoods where gangs are active with up to 25 more officers this weekend, who will engage in “high-profile, aggressive” enforcement.

“Within their rights, naturally, we will be stopping people . . . and try to prevent any additional violent activity,” Chavez said.

Police will try to discourage gang members “from being out and about . . . as much as possible,” he said.

When unfamiliar cars drive down Cedar Street now, they are followed by nervous eyes. Residents said they are scared to wander outside.

“Esta caliente aqui (it’s hot here),” said Jesus Aleyva, 26, who lives in an apartment building covered with graffiti of the Loper gang--the apparent target of the shootings.

“If you leave your house, they’re not going to stop and ask if you’re a Loper; they’re going to shoot.”

Patricia Vega, the manager of the building where Aleyva lives, said she used to paint over the graffiti three times a week but gave up when she saw that the gangs could paint faster than she could.

Drug dealers operate openly in the alley behind the building, she said.

“We’re going to look for a house to get out of here,” she said, surrounded by four of her five children. “I don’t want the kids raised here.”

Across the street, Virginia Moreno, widow of the 53-year-old man who was killed during a gang dispute, sobbed uncontrollably as she held her 4-month-old grandson to her chest and tried to talk about the violence of the last 10 days.

“There aren’t words to describe it,” she said in Spanish. “My husband didn’t have anything to do with it. Why did they kill him? Why? Why?”

An old man who speaks no English sat in front of the house he and his wife have occupied since 1964, helping his 4-year-old grandson--one of 35 grandchildren--learn to read. What is happening on South Cedar Street is “una desgracia “ he said. “What can you do?” he asked. “I want to move, but my wife, she doesn’t. We have all our sons nearby.”

Family members and neighbors agreed that Jimenez, Hernandez and Moreno were not gang members, although they may have had relatives and friends who were. They said the Lopers consider the attacks as personal assaults.

“They’re shooting my home boys,” said Juan Diaz, 17, who says he is a Loper. “I don’t know what the vatos (guys) are going to do.”

Diaz said he thought the killings were a “payback” from members of another gang whose trucks were broken into recently.

“They’ll be back again,” Diaz said.

Xochitl Jimenez, whose family loaded their belongings and moved out of the neighborhood Friday because of the bloodshed, said the killings have been “for nothing--for dumb reasons.”

“They’re killing young people just for fun. They’re killing innocent people. It’s got to stop.”