Anti-Gang Group Forms After Student’s Slaying

Lancaster parents and government officials have formed an anti-gang organization in response to the Antelope Valley’s first gang slaying two weeks ago, when a stray bullet killed an Antelope Valley High School senior outside a party.

Tentatively named the Committee Against Gang Activity, the organization held its first meeting Thursday night at Lancaster City Hall to discuss ways of combatting the growing gang presence in the Antelope Valley. The wide-ranging group includes Lancaster City Council members, school officials, ministers, parents and students, said Chairman Dennis Bogard, a Los Angeles Fire Department paramedic.

The emergence of gangs in the high desert over the last three years--and the accompanying graffiti and violence in streets and schools--had not gone unnoticed amid the area’s rapid growth, Bogard and others said.

But they said the death of Chris Sanford, a high school soccer player and innocent bystander, has shocked the community into action. Sanford was killed when a gang member fired into a crowd outside a Lancaster house party after a confrontation in which another man was shot and wounded.

“That’s what really set this off,” said Councilman George Theophanis, who along with Councilman Arnie Rodio is working with the committee. “It’s terrible that the tragedy happened. Maybe something good will come out of this.”

Sheriff’s detectives are looking for a 15-year-old Sylmar youth who has been charged in Sanford’s murder. He is described as a member of a Sylmar gang affiliated with a gang based in the Quartz Hill area west of Lancaster, authorities said.

Capt. Gary Vance, commander of the Antelope Valley sheriff’s station, said he hopes the new organization will spread information. Residents, he said, have been “in the denial stage,” as evidenced by poor turnout at a community seminar on gangs late last year. The station’s six-deputy gang intelligence unit will add a deputy next month, an increase approved before the shooting, Vance said.

“We’ve been doing pretty well in catching the gang members,” he said, noting that intelligence gathered by the unit helped identify the suspect in Sanford’s death. “We need information. We don’t need vigilantes. We need to keep the focus on the problem. We need the understanding that if we stop your kid and we talk to him that doesn’t necessarily label him a gang member.”

Bogard and others said emotions and tempers are high in the Antelope Valley as the result of Sanford’s death, so the citizens group will make a point of discouraging any semblance of vigilante-type actions. The group will work to foster communication with authorities about gang activity, toughen discipline in schools, and provide education for parents and alternative programs for teen-agers, Bogard said.

Antelope Valley High School teacher Monica D’Errico said the committee must also fight the notion that the spread of gangs is inevitable.

“I sat and talked to a hard-core gang member,” who attends the school, D’Errico said. “Her parents were gang members. She told me ‘There’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop it. . . .’ That might be true, but we can’t just sit back and do nothing.”