‘Poetic Justice’ Leads to Arrest of 5 Robbery Suspects

Jose Cienfuegos quickly steered his BMW into a tight U-turn on Fedora Street in Koreatown late Monday night when he saw two men blocking his path. But by then it was too late.

The car was surrounded by at least five men--members of a violent Latino gang, police said.

One stuck a gun to Cienfuegos’ head, robbing the 28-year-old Los Angeles man of $200. Another ripped a gold chain from the neck of James Myong, 26, who was in the front passenger seat, tore off his glasses and punched him in the mouth. Another passenger, Jae Sung, 26, gave up $10 after the rear window, smashed with a steel pipe, shattered behind his head.

Shouting expletives, the gunman, identified by police as Walter Lacinos, pulled open the door, telling Cienfuegos to get out. Cienfuegos stepped on the gas and sped off. Lacinos fired at the car but, instead, hit one of his companions in the neck, Lt. Rob Watters said.

“Poetic justice,” the lieutenant said.

Jacob Padilla, 19, was in critical but stable condition at Good Samaritan Hospital.

Lacinos, Padilla and three other alleged gang members, arrested by police after a search of the area near the shooting scene, were booked for investigation of robbery, Watters said.

For the three occupants of Cienfuegos’s car, a new route home from dinner shortly before 11 p.m. turned into a very close call.

“We were very lucky,” Myong said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

His friends could be heard in the background. “All right,” one said, after Myong repeated the news that one of the assailants was in critical condition.

“We thought we were going to die,” Myong said.

Cienfuegos agreed.

“Everything was so unexpected,” he said.

Others weren’t as lucky as five deaths topped a bloody night and morning of violence in the Los Angeles area, authorities said.

Three people died in two separate incidents in Compton.

Tyrone Robinson, 18, and Robert Guindazola, 21, were killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting early Tuesday morning in the 1000 block of South Muriel Avenue, police said. A third person was wounded in the leg. Police had no suspects.

At about 2 a.m., Roberto Vargas, 22, was unloading a bicycle from the trunk of his car in front of his house in the 1700 block of East Ezmirlian Street in Compton when two men demanded the bike at gunpoint, police said. Vargas refused and was shot. He died about an hour later at Dominguez Medical Center.

“The bicycle was left at the scene,” Compton Police Lt. M.D. Bunton said.

Shortly before 3 a.m., Douglas Kling was repeatedly stabbed by an acquaintance in Arroyo Seco Park in Pasadena, where the two had been drinking beer, police said.

The 32-year-old Burbank man and Margarito Gamboa argued over the latter’s bicycle, police said, and Gamboa fatally stabbed Kling before fleeing. Gamboa, who lives near the park, was arrested and booked for investigation of murder, police said.

An unidentified man was shot to death at about 9:30 p.m. Monday in the 16000 block of Thorson Avenue in East Compton, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said. No further information was released.