13 Held as Suspects in Fatal Gang Fight

Los Angeles police officers raided more than a dozen sites in and around San Pedro early Wednesday and arrested 13 people in the fatal beating this summer of a Lawndale man in a gang fight.

The suspects, members or affiliates of a San Pedro gang, according to police, were booked on suspicion of kicking and pummeling Victor Espinosa, 28, a member of a Compton gang. The fighting broke out in a San Pedro park after Espinosa and two companions allegedly defaced some of the San Pedro gang’s graffiti.

Espinosa died Sept. 18, about a month after the beating, from multiple injuries to his head and body. He never regained consciousness after the fight. Two men who were with him, also described by police as members of the Compton gang, were also kicked and beaten, but they survived.

5 More Sought

“Because the coroner cannot specifically establish which kick killed Espinosa, everybody who was kicking him appears to be culpable,” said Larry Kallestad, chief of homicide detectives for the Harbor Division.

Among the 13 arrested Wednesday were four minors, who were being held at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey. Three other suspects were already in custody on unrelated charges. As many as five others are being sought, Kallestad said.

The fight occurred in the early evening of Aug. 14 in Peck Park and was sparked by reports to members of the San Pedro gang that Espinosa and his companions had scratched out the local gang’s graffiti and replaced it with their own, Kallestad said.

Challenged to Fight

Five or six carloads of members and affiliates of the San Pedro gang converged on the park, where one man challenged Espinosa to a fist fight.

When Espinosa appeared to be winning the fight, Kallestad said, about 20 members of the San Pedro gang jumped him and his companions. The three were left bleeding on the pavement of a parking lot.

“Initially there wasn’t much activity related to any witnesses,” Kallestad said, “but when (Espinosa) died, that made people feel it was more than a couple of guys getting beat up. We started getting cooperation.

“The sad thing about this is that you have one guy dead, two injured and 16 families--mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers--having to go through the trauma and emotionalism of all this at Christmastime,” he said.

“And it’s all because someone scratched out three letters. How stupid can you get?”