2 Arrested in Garden Grove Slayings : Crime: Police and witnesses attribute the stabbing deaths of two young men to a dispute between gang members.

As her tattooed fingers wound and unwound her dead boyfriend’s tie around the artificial black rose she held tightly, Irma De La Cruz wiped away tears Saturday and talked about the man she had planned to marry.

He and a friend had been stabbed to death early Saturday in the yard of a Garden Grove home, in a dispute allegedly involving members of gang from a nearby neighborhood. Another man was injured in the brawl, which broke out as a small party went on inside the house.

“Even last night, he kept telling everyone, ‘We’re going to get married,’ ” she said. Burying her head in the arms of her friend, Virginia Soto, 19, De La Cruz added between soft sobs, “What am I going to do now?”

Garden Grove police arrested two men Saturday night in connection with the slayings. Taula Poe, 20, of Westminster, contacted an attorney and surrendered to the police, they said; Arnold Mendoza, 19, of Garden Grove, was arrested later at a friend’s house, Lt. John Woods said.

The two are being held at Orange County Jail on suspicion of murder and assault with the intent to murder, Woods said. Bail had not yet been set. Police are investigating whether a third man was involved.

Outside the house on 8th Street on Saturday, bloodstains marked the spot on the black gravel pavement where De La Cruz’s boyfriend, Hector De La Torre, 24, died. Friends said Torre, of Santa Ana, was a member of the F-Troop gang. Also killed was Oscar “Tiny” Jimenez, 18, of Garden Grove, said to be a member of the Anaheim Westside gang.

Shortly before midnight, the men reportedly exchanged heated words with three men who friends of the dead men said are members of a third gang, the Hoodlum Crips of Garden Grove. The men had stopped by the party to drop off guests.

“They’re just . . . gangs that don’t get along,” said De La Cruz, 20, about the Crips’ relations with the F-Troop and Westside gangs.

De La Cruz said that the three men had driven away after an initial exchange of words but returned on foot moments later. It was then that another argument reportedly erupted and the stabbings occurred.

“Everyone was just walking around trying to get their anger out,” De La Cruz said of the incident. “I kept trying to tell them, ‘Just let it go,’ ‘cause I knew they would be back. Next thing I know, I heard all this yelling, those guys had come back.”

Jimenez’s younger brother, Marco Jimenez, 15, said the men were harassing his brother, so he found a bolt from a weightlifting set, went outside and threw it at the attackers. Then the fighting escalated.

Stabbed in the Neck

After the stabbings, one of the party-goers immediately drove Oscar Jimenez to a Garden Grove Medical Center, and De La Torre was taken a few minutes later in an ambulance to UC Irvine Medical Center. De La Cruz said her boyfriend had been stabbed in the neck and the side about 15 times, and Jimenez was stabbed in the head and chest.

Those gathered at the house Saturday said they feared that the killings could set off retaliatory attacks.

“I’m sure they’ll go after them,” De La Cruz said of her boyfriend’s gang. “They (F-Troop) just loved Hector.”

Like most older members, De La Torre wasn’t as active in the gang as he had been in his youth, she said. He didn’t “go around flashing F-Troop” anymore, she said. But she said he would never have quit the gang.

She added that she would tell his fellow gang members who she believed was responsible for the fatal stabbing. “I wouldn’t want any of his home boys to get hurt, but they have to get back somehow.”

Jimenez’s brother, Marco, who said he is not a gang member, said he was sure that both Westside and F-Troop would plan to retaliate, and shook his head with seeming disbelief when he thought of members of a smaller gang killing members of two larger ones.

“When you get F-Troop together, there goes everything,” he said. “There’s no way the Garden Grove police are going to stop them.”

A neighbor said she heard women screaming and some men roughhousing, but didn’t think much of it since the residents of the house are known in the neighborhood for keeping late hours and throwing parties.

Heard Screaming

“At about twelve o’clock, I heard all this screaming and yelling. I thought it was another one of their wild parties,” Jerri Strimback said. She added that the violence frightens her and that she is often concerned for the safety of her four young children. “You don’t know what they’re going to do next,” she said.

“It’s dumb,” said De La Cruz, recounting the number of friends she said had been killed and injured in gang warfare, and questioning when it would end. “The only thing I say is: Who’s next in the neighborhood?”