Garden Grove Shooting Prompts Call for Action : Councilman Requests a 3-City Task Force While Neighborhood Braces for Retaliation

In the wake of one of Orange County’s bloodiest gang attacks, Garden Grove Councilman and former Police Chief Frank Kessler called Monday for the creation of a regional gang-suppression task force, as police tried to forestall another round of violence.

“These gangs don’t respect city or county borders,” said Kessler at a Monday night City Council meeting. “I think we need to take a lesson from the formation of the countywide regional narcotics task force four years ago.”

Kessler’s request took the form of asking City Manager George Tindall and Police Chief John Robertson to study the feasibility of establishing a unit that would coordinate the anti-gang efforts of Garden Grove, Westminster and Santa Ana.

“Right now all the cities do their own thing,” Kessler said. “They coordinate, but usually only after something like this happens.”

Even as Kessler spoke, a few blocks to the south in Santa Ana, another neighborhood braced for what residents worry will be retaliation for Saturday’s shooting--in which a teen-ager and a 4-year-old boy were killed and six others were wounded--and county gang experts say that their fears are well-founded because of the viciousness of the attack.

Police believe that members of the 5th Street gang in Santa Ana committed the shooting against members of the 17th Street gang in retaliation for an earlier shooting.

All was quiet on 5th Street in Santa Ana on Monday, but residents fear that it is only a matter of time before there is more gang violence in the neighborhood.

Anticipating the violence, Phyllis Cabrera, her husband and their two children checked into a Garden Grove motel to spend the night. But other residents, accustomed to almost weekly shoot-outs, have resigned themselves to accept a confrontation.

“There is little we can do except lie low and hope that we’re not shot,” said 70-year-old Ruby Coursey.

Tom Wright, supervisor of the Orange County Probation Department’s gang unit, agreed.

“They’ll do the pay-back,” said Wright, predicting a retaliatory visit to 5th Street by the 17th Street gang.

Garden Grove police on Monday re-interviewed witnesses to Saturday’s shooting, in which gang members armed with automatic assault rifles drove down La Bonita Avenue in a pickup truck and opened fire on a group of men, women and children who were on their way to the movie “Lethal Weapon 2.”

Killed were Miguel Lorenzo Navarro, 17, of Santa Ana, and Frank Fernandez Jr., 4, of Garden Grove. Six others were wounded, including the 4-year-old boy’s father, Frank Sr., and his 2-year-old brother, Christopher. Police said Navarro, a 17th Street gang member, was the target of the attack.

The shooting spree occurred in the 13800 block of La Bonita Avenue, a working-class neighborhood of second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans, less than a block from Santa Ana city limits.

Garden Grove police, aided by Santa Ana investigators, sorted through numerous tips and other information, much of it unsolicited from the community, but were not close to making any arrests Monday, Garden Grove Police Homicide Sgt. Phil Mason said.

“We’re making progress,” Mason said. “We’re pretty well certain what gang is involved. It’s just a matter of sorting it out. There’re a limited number of players involved.”

Investigators are looking at several gang shootings “that go back a while” in connection with Saturday’s attack, Mason said.

“It’s mostly speculation,” Mason said. “We’re trying to sort out who the victims (of the earlier shootings) were.”

Kessler, who retired last year after 14 years as police chief, said he was shocked that “the worst gang shooting in the history of Orange County” occurred in his city.

“It’s disappointing that we several years ago devoted two full-time (police) personnel to keep track of gang activity,” Kessler said. “However, it appears that no longer is a viable control technique.”

Virgil Coursey, 71, who has lived with his wife, Ruby, in a two-bedroom house at the corner of 5th and Maxine streets for 40 years, has more immediate concerns than whether a regional gang task force is formed.

“We’re expecting a holy war here,” said Virgil Coursey, who said the 17th Street gang “will not stop until they kill a couple people here.”

Other residents of the area said the neighborhood had previously been the target of rival gangs, adding that the violence started again about six months ago, with gunplay a common occurrence on weekend nights.

The first signs of renewed violence in the neighborhood came a few weeks ago, when gang graffiti painted on buildings on the corner of 5th and Euclid were crossed out by large black Xs, residents said.

A few days later, a prominent 5th Street gang member known as “Speedy,” was gunned down by 17th Street rivals, residents said. “Speedy” was released from a hospital a few days ago, said Phyllis Cabrera, his aunt, who declined to provide his full name.

But Speedy’s mother said a reports that Saturday’s drive-by attack was the 5th Street gang’s revenge for her son’s shooting were mere speculation.

“They are only guessing,” she said. “They only want an excuse to come back here and kill innocent people.”

Still, residents expect the 17th Street gang to retaliate.

“This has been going on for the 19 years I have been living here,” said a 42-year-old mother of two who asked that her name not be used. “And it isn’t going to go away soon.”

On the same night Speedy was shot, trigger-happy gang members riddled Virgil and Ruby Coursey’s house with bullets. Three bullets pierced the aluminum siding on one side of their house; another bullet crashed into a sewing machine inside the house. Ruby Coursey saved the fragments from the bullet and showed it to reporters Monday.

“You hear the noise of the trucks revving their engines, and then you hear ‘tat-a-tat-a-tat,’ ” said Coursey, clicking her fingers to describe the automatic gunfire.

The gang members also sprayed Cabrera’s house with about 15 bullets. Her sons have covered up the holes with plaster. Cabrera denied that her sons are involved in gang activities.

Tung To, a 23-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who moved into the neighborhood five years ago, said it sometimes “sounds like Vietnam during the war.”

“We don’t come out of the house, and we mind our own business,” he said. “We don’t want to complain.”

Ruby Coursey said she has begged her husband to sell the house they have owned for 40 years and move to another neighborhood. But Virgil Coursey says he doesn’t think that they could afford a house somewhere else.

Coursey looked across Maxine Street at a newly painted white house that a Vietnamese family had just bought.

“They are in for a rude awakening,” he said.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron and James Tortolano contributed to this story.

GANG REHAB--Victory Outreach relies on ex-gang members to help rescue youths from the lure of street warfare. Page 3.