Local News in Brief : 3 Held in Ambush Slaying of Boy, 16

Three Harbor City gang members have been arrested 11 months after police say they ambushed and killed a non-gang member, a 16-year-old Wilmington boy who was walking home from a Lenten youth group at his local church.

Rafael Pereda, a high school track medalist and weightlifter, was shot several times as he walked home from church last March 22. The suspects were “parked there, waiting, not for anybody in particular,” Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Kallestad said. The motive was “pure gang territorial reasons,” the detective said. Although Pereda had never belonged to a gang, he “was the right age to be a gang member and the suspects chose him because he fit that profile and he was in a rival gang neighborhood.”

Kallestad said two of the suspects--Kevin Stave, 18, of Harbor City, and Hector Acuna Garcia, 17--were already in custody on other charges. Stave faces an unrelated narcotics charge and Garcia, although a juvenile, is being tried as an adult along with two other gang members in a double drive-by killing in Wilmington last August, Kallestad said.

A 16-year-old youth, allegedly the driver of the murder car, was also arrested.