Home Boy’s Death Leads to Pal Facing Life

George de la Torre and Conrad Franco were busy that afternoon last November, wreaking the havoc that Baldwin Park police say has made the “Rascals” gang one of the most violent in their city.

De la Torre was driving a dark gray Monte Carlo at about 60 m.p.h. through a 30-m.p.h. school zone, police say, while Franco was leaning out the passenger’s window firing a .38-caliber revolver at what was presumably a carload of rival gang members up ahead.

They didn’t pay attention to the signal turning red, nor to the cross traffic beginning to enter the busy intersection near Sierra Vista High School.

The impact of a pickup truck crushed Franco, 18, who died the next morning at Terrace Plaza Medical Center. Police arrested De la Torre, 21, whose face was cut, as he tried to run away.

In an ironic twist to his already long list of legal troubles, De la Torre is being charged with first-degree murder for causing the death of his own “home boy.”

“We’re really getting two for the price of one,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dennis E. Ferris, after De la Torre pleaded innocent Jan. 12 in Pomona Superior Court. “In 50% of the cases, they hurt the wrong person. If anybody’s going to get hurt, I’d just as soon see them hurt themselves.”

De la Torre, who was awaiting trial on charges of cocaine sales and auto burglary at the time of the accident, is being held in Los Angeles County Jail without bail. His lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Kenneth L. Wenzl, did not return phone calls from The Times.

Although authorities do not believe that De la Torre intended to harm Franco, a person they say was as much a suspect as a victim, they also do not know who it was the two appeared to be attempting to harm.

So prosecutors, who have been trying to put De la Torre behind bars for several years, are contending that he created the circumstances in which death was a likely outcome for his passenger.

Besides the high-speed chase, a Breathalyzer test after the accident indicated that De la Torre’s blood-alcohol level was 0.14%, well above the limit at which the law presumes a person to be too impaired to drive, officers said.

“He was committing a dangerous or deadly act, the natural and probable consequences of which are death,” Ferris said.

On top of that, De la Torre’s past gang activity with the Rascals, a subset of the larger “Eastside Bolen” gang, had led police to serve him with a “street terrorist” notice under the state’s Street Terrorism Enforcement Act.

Under the act, any group of three or more people who have a common name or identifying symbol, and who have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity since September, 1988, can be punished with extended prison sentences.

If he is convicted of a felony, for instance, De la Torre’s sentence could be extended by as much as three years.

“If anybody deserved to be called a street terrorist, it was him,” Baldwin Park Police Lt. Mike Bennett said. “We’ve been after him for years.”

Police said that Franco, although having no formal record of gang involvement, was believed to associate with members of the Rascals. An autopsy revealed no traces of drugs or alcohol in his system, authorities said.