‘Even Animals . . . Don’t Kill Like This,’ Priest Says as Police Seek 3

As sheriff’s detectives looked for suspects in the murder and rape of a young Mexican woman and the beating of her boyfriend, Father Luis Valbuena struggled to find meaning Sunday in the brutal incident that began at gunpoint in a drive-in movie theater.

“All the readings of the Bible for the four Sundays before Christmas are talking about what the world can be, what the world should be . . . the lion and calf lie down together, the child will play with the serpent,” he told more than 1,000 parishioners at the 10 a.m. Mass at Holy Family parish, where Irene Franco, 20, often came to pray.

“Jesus is coming and bringing his utopia, the kingdom of God,” Valbuena said. “How can we have tragic incidents like the case of Irene in our midst? It’s not human. But even animals kill only in self-defense or because they have to eat. They don’t kill like this.”

Irene Franco came to Wilmington to visit her sister one year ago and stayed with a local family when the sister went back to their home in Guadalajara, friends said. She worked in the Granada Shoe Store on Avalon Boulevard and studied English at night.

At the store on Sunday afternoon, owner Victor Rodriguez called her “a decent person” and said the crime was “incomprehensible.”

Shoe clerk Beatrice Vasquez said her co-worker had plans for the future. “She talked about her boyfriend and herself. She said she was going to go back to Mexico to study medicine.”

Those dreams were shattered Friday night when Miss Franco and her date, Jesus Martinez, 26, were abducted by three armed men as they watched a movie at the South Bay Six Theatre, a sprawling outdoor cinema near the intersection of the San Diego and Harbor freeways.

The gunmen tied them up and drove them to an alley in an industrial area north of Carson. After the violence, the men told Martinez not to worry, that they would drop Miss Franco off in a few minutes, he told authorities.

A 13-year-old boy found her body, shot once in the head, in a field in South Los Angeles Saturday morning. The couple’s car was found burned and abandoned near Watts.

Sheriff’s deputies said they hoped that other members of the drive-in audience would come forward with information that might help track down the killers. Two detectives were working on the case Sunday.

Raymond Syufy of Syufy Enterprises, a San Francisco firm that owns the drive-in, declined Sunday to discuss security precautions at the theater or answer other questions. The drive-in was open Sunday night.