Mother Turns In Son as Shooting Suspect

The mother of a suspected gang member Wednesday turned in her 16-year-old son to Pomona police, who arrested him in connection with a drive-by shooting that seriously wounded a woman and a young boy the previous day.

The teen-ager, whose name was not released because of his age, was being held without bail at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Norwalk on suspicion of attempted murder, police said.

Based on information from witnesses, officers obtained a warrant to search his home Tuesday night, but the youth was not there. When they told his mother, however, that her son was a suspect in the shooting, she said she would bring him into the station first thing Wednesday morning.

“I kind of scoffed at that, thinking, ‘Sure,’ ” said Sgt. Ron Windell, head of the Homicide Division. “But in the morning, there they were. I was very surprised.”

Still in critical condition Wednesday was 6-year-old Daniel Rodriguez, who suffered a head wound, a spokeswoman for Pomona Valley Medical Center said.

Olga Perez, 23, also wounded in the head, was in good condition.

Perez’s mother, Olga Gomez, 52, said her daughter is the fourth of her eight children to be wounded in what she believes were gang-related attacks.

The assault appeared to have been directed at a rival gang member who was on the porch of Perez’s tiny bungalow while she cleaned house Tuesday morning, police said.

The little boy’s mother, Marie Rodriguez, 23, said she had been staying there for the last month in an effort to escape her estranged husband’s gang life style.

About 11:30 a.m., Rodriguez said, she saw men flashing gang signs with their hands as they drove slowly by. Witnesses said the people in the car shouted the name of a gang that is the rival of both Rodriguez’s husband and of the man on the porch.

As they dived for cover, several shots were fired, at least some of which came from a shotgun, Windell said.