Car Shot Up at Home of 4-Year-Old Gang Victim

Several shots were fired Thursday into a car parked in front of Frank and Irene Fernandez’s home, the same place where gang violence claimed the lives of the couple’s 4-year-old son and a teen-ager last September.

No one was injured in the 12:30 a.m. incident on La Bonita Avenue. Between three and eight bullets pierced the car, said a spokesman for the Garden Grove police. He could not confirm if the car belonged to the Fernandez couple, who could not be reached for comment.

But neighbors on the street said Thursday that they believe the incident was probably linked to the Sept. 16, 1989, drive-by shooting that killed Frank Fernandez Jr., 4, and Miguel “Smokey” Navarro III, 17, a member of Santa Ana’s 17th Street gang. Six other people were wounded in the September attack allegedly conducted by the rival 5th Street gang.

“It’s all part of the same thing, with the same people,” said Adam Cueva, who has lived on the street for nearly 20 years.

“I know it must be the same ones (doing the shooting), because the people on the other streets around us don’t have this problem,” Cueva said.

He said he did not know whose car was shot because he didn’t venture outside until several hours later, after it had been removed.

“They’ve been going back and forth on this ever since the murder,” said another neighbor, who asked not to be identified. “It’s just the people from a few blocks over.”

Frank Fernandez told The Times in an interview last fall that he is a former member of the 17th Street gang and believed that he was the intended target in the shooting. In an attempt to raise their children in a gang-free area, Fernandez and his wife, both in their early 20s, had moved six years ago to the Garden Grove neighborhood near Westminster and Euclid streets.

About three weeks after the September murders, Garden Grove police arrested four members of the 5th Street gang, including a 14-year-old boy who allegedly fired the shots.

Three of the suspects, Louis Palomino Valdez, Roman Gabriel Menchaca and Robert Phillip Figueroa, on Tuesday were ordered to stand trial in Orange County Superior Court for two counts each of murder, eight counts each of attempted murder and one count each of conspiracy to commit murder, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef. Arraignment is scheduled March 15.

A judge had earlier determined that the 14-year-old would not be tried as an adult.

In January of this year, another 5th Street gang member, Randall Albert Martinez, was arrested in connection with harassment of the Rodriguez family, relatives of the Fernandez couple who witnessed the shooting.