2 Grandchildren Witness Slaying of Driver by Man From Other Car

Charles Padilla, a 57-year-old restaurateur who loved to spend time with his 12 grandchildren, was driving two of them home in the Florence area when a car cut him off in an alley, according to the sheriff’s deputies who investigated the case.

They said Padilla honked his horn, a short argument ensued and suddenly, as his 11-year-old granddaughter and 9-year-old grandson watched in horror, a passenger in the other car got out, pulled a gun and shot Padilla dead.

“It was totally senseless,” Padilla’s daughter, Lori Lashinsky, said Tuesday. “It happened just because someone wanted to drive in front of him. It happened for no reason at all.”

Neighbors said it had been years--25 or so--since Padilla first opened the small restaurant--named Lupita’s, in honor of his wife, Lupe--on Compton Avenue in the Florence area.

They said the restaurant, which specializes in Mexican food in a largely Latino neighborhood, wasn’t a huge success, but it did all right. And the Padillas, who lived a block away, on Makee Avenue, in a tidy, modest home decorated with family photos, were said to be one of the best-known and best-liked families in the area.

“He was a really nice guy,” said his son-in-law, Tom Lashinsky. “He was always laughing, always happy.”

“He loved to be with the kids,” Lori Lashinsky said. “They all called him ‘Grandpa,’ and they loved him. He used to take them to the pizza place, where they have the rides and the slides and the pinball machines.”

Tuesday was the day Padilla’s 11-year-old granddaughter, Karina, was graduating from elementary school, and he wanted to make sure he got pictures of the event. So, on his way back to their nearby home Monday night, after they’d stopped by the house on Makee Avenue, Padilla took Karina and her brother, Charles, to a drugstore to pick up some film.

“We were back in the car, heading out the alley from Thrifty’s, when this car went in front of my grandfather’s,” Karina said Tuesday. “My grandfather honked. . . .

“The car stopped, and the passenger got out and came up to my grandfather’s window,” she said. “Grandpa tried to close it, but the man held it open. . . .

“ ‘What’s your problem?’ the man asked. ‘Nothing,’ Grandpa said. The man asked him that several times, and Grandpa said the same thing.

“Then the man pulled out a gun and shot him.”

Karina’s brother ran from the car in one direction as the assailant fled on foot in another, according to Karina. Moments later, she said, a 14-year-old boy ran up and tried to help the mortally wounded man.

Karina said she ran after her brother, eventually finding him in a nearby restaurant. Meanwhile, she said, the other boy drove her grandfather to the nearby Firestone sheriff’s station.

“That was a very brave boy,” Charles Padilla Jr.--the father of Karina and her brother, said later.

Deputies said the stricken man was rushed to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:10 p.m. Monday. Investigators described the man who shot Padilla and the man behind the wheel of the car that cut him off as in their late 20s or early 30s.

Lori Lashinsky, who lives with her husband and their children in Victorville, said crime has been increasing in the Florence neighborhood where she grew up and she has been increasingly worried about her parents’ safety.

“We wanted him to sell that restaurant because we were afraid something would happen there,” she said. “Now this happens, and it has nothing to do with it.”