Attackers Kill Youth, Injure Companion

After being chased down a dead-end street in a Fullerton neighborhood, two young men were viciously stabbed and beaten early Sunday by a gang of assailants who killed one of them and gravely wounded the other.

By midday Sunday, Fullerton police had arrested three men and a boy in connection with the incident.

Police said the assailants had led the victims to an isolated spot on the pretense of selling them marijuana but then tried to rob them instead.

The attack, which happened around 2 a.m. in a normally peaceful residential neighborhood, ended when one of the residents awakened by the commotion ran shouting into the street and scared away the attackers.

Died at Hospital

Police said Vernon Morris Carter III, 17, of Fullerton was found lying on the pavement in 1400 block of Vista del Mar Drive bleeding profusely from several stab wounds. He was taken by helicopter to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he died several hours later.

His companion, Arthur Rodriguez Jr., whom police said also goes by the name of William J. Gaulvan, had been severely beaten with a metal and concrete post and may have been stabbed. Rodriguez was reported in serious condition Sunday at UCI Medical Center. Police said he is between 18 and 20 years old and lives in Anaheim.

Arrested on suspicion of murder, police said, were Juan Manuel Lopez, 18, and Marcelino Martinez, 22, both of Fullerton; Ramon Carrillo Castaneda, 21, whose city was not known, and a 16-year-old Fullerton boy who was not identified because he is a juvenile. A fifth suspect had been arrested, but he was released after questioning.

The neighborhood where the attack took place is situated on a hill dotted with $1-million homes. It is near the intersection of Chapman Avenue and State College Boulevard and about a mile from Troy High School and Cal State Fullerton.

Police said Carter and Rodriguez had gone to a Fullerton liquor store where they met the other youths, whom they asked whether they had any marijuana. The youths, who apparently had no marijuana, led the pair into the Vista del Mar neighborhood and tried to rob them. The victims tried to flee in their car, but the assailants pursued them into the cul-de-sac, where they became trapped.

Residents frightened by the ruckus had initially called police to report a fight, Officer Tim Beason said.

Residents said one of the victims kept calling for his father. According to one resident who asked not to be identified, she and her husband heard one of the victims scream: “ ‘Help! help! They’re killing me! I’m dying . . . . ‘

Heard Sounds of Beatings

“We could hear these sounds of something hitting bodies and the (groans) of somebody getting hit,” she said.

The woman said the attackers first hit the car Carter and Rodriguez were riding in before going after the young men themselves.

“You could hear pipes hitting into cars like it was World War III,” the woman said.

The assailants apparently hit the victims’ car with a metal bed frame that had been left on the curb for garbage collection. “They take this metal bed frame and start thrashing it into the windshield and breaking the windows in the car,” the woman said.

“One of (the victims) said that the four guys were beating them up for 20 bucks of buds (marijuana) or 20 buds,” she said. “He said, ‘Can you believe they beat us up so bad for 20 bucks?’ ”

Finally, the woman said, her husband ran into the street and the attackers fled, some in their car and others on foot. Her husband persuaded Rodriguez, who appeared to be in shock, to sit on a curb as their teen-age son tried to give Carterfirst aid.

Police said information from the victims led them to the suspects’ vehicle in the 600 block of South Newell Avenue in Fullerton. The car, which had blood stains, was impounded, Beason said.

Police said crimes of this nature are rare in that Fullerton neighborhood.

“We haven’t had a situation like this in quite a while,” Lt. Jeff Roop said.