Anaheim Family’s Plight : Brother Lost to Bullets, Truck Lost to Bureaucracy

The family of a Mexican-born man who was shot and killed on the Santa Ana Freeway in August now faces the loss of the pickup truck that police impounded for evidence in the case.

After Juan Pedro Trujillo was shot dead Aug. 6, his pickup truck was impounded as evidence.

Almost two months after the Anaheim tire store employee’s death, family members are being told they can’t have the truck back until they pay $300 in storage fees. They say they don’t have the money.

“When they took the truck, we were told that it wouldn’t cost us anything because the towing was going to be paid by the police who took the truck as part of an investigation to find out who shot Juan,” said Trujillo’s sister, Carmen Saragoza, 25.

Orange police say the situation is the family’s fault because the truck was ready for release Aug. 11, and the family didn’t pick it up from the company that has a city contract to tow and store vehicles. Now towing charges and storage fees have mounted to $631, and the company, Tony’s Unocal 76 and Towing in Orange, is threatening to sell the truck at public auction Oct. 13 to recover its money.

Saragoza said the family did contact the towing company Aug. 11 but were told they had to pay a $120 fee before the truck would be released.

That demand for a fee was wrong, said Police Sgt. Art Romo. Towing firm spokesmen were unavailable for comment.

“What someone should have done was to call us to get the truck out,” Romo said. “They should have complained to us about it, and we would have helped them.”

Now, he said, the family will have to pay $300, a reduced amount the towing company has agreed to accept.

But for Trujillo’s relatives, that sum might as well be thousands, they said.

Carmen Saragoza, her husband, Juan, and their six children share a two-bedroom Anaheim apartment with another family, and “we barely make ends meet here as you can see,” she said during an interview at her home Friday.

The family would like to sell the truck, a 1973 Datsun pickup with 92,000 miles. The money would help pay for a trip to Mexico to visit her family and see her brother’s grave to pay their respects. They could not pay the air fare to attend the funeral in the rural Mexican village of El Juamuchil, several hundred miles southeast of Guadalajara.

Saragoza said her husband only earns about $230 a week working in a pet food factory, and most of his salary pays for half the $700 monthly rent, the children’s food and other family expenses.

“I think it’s not right for us to pay (because) they said it wouldn’t cost us anything,” she said.

The truck was impounded, Romo said, so it could be examined for evidence at the county’s crime lab. But when a police investigator tried to call the relatives to say it would be released, they were unavailable, Romo said.

“Instead, he contacted the apartment manager and told him to tell them the vehicle was available,” Romo said.

According to police, a family member contacted the tow company about information on the truck. But when told by the firm there was a $120 charge, “someone said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and hung up the phone,” Romo said.

The family disagrees and said that every time they have asked for information about the truck, the towing firm has told them that police had not authorized its release.

“They didn’t let us enter the truck to get some important papers out of it, although we asked. We asked them when will the investigation be finished, but they didn’t know,” Trujillo’s sister said.

A few weeks passed, and when the Saragoza family received a notice in the mail that the towing firm was going to sell the truck to recover its charges, they began to worry.

Spokesmen for several other police departments said there is a wide variance in towing policies.

However, “it can be handled with discretion and don’t let Orange P.D. tell you differently,” said Costa Mesa Police Lt. Cliff McBride. “These contracts that these tow companies have are very lucrative. They don’t want to make the P.D. unhappy by making things difficult for a poor Mexican family.”

In Westminster, police notify the owner by mail, not telephone, to avoid any problems, Officer Tom Broderson said.

Trujillo died after someone in a car fired several rounds from a semiautomatic assault rifle at the truck. Trujillo, his brother, Jose Trujillo, who is the registered owner of the truck, and a cousin were returning home from a restaurant about 3:45 a.m. when the incident occurred near the northbound Chapman Avenue exit in Orange. The two passengers in the truck were not injured.

Despite dozens of tips, police said they had no leads and were continuing to look for a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass they believe was involved in the shooting.

Trujillo’s sister said she notified the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana for help and, as a result, the consulate intervened on the family’s behalf but with little success.

“The tow truck company told them the same thing,” she said.

Romo expressed compassion for the family and the tragedy it has endured.

“I talked to the owner and he said he will waive the tow service charge and release the vehicle for $300. But the family will be charged for storage,” Romo said.