Gang Gunfire Is Claiming Growing Toll of Innocents

Four-year-old Gilbert Perez Jr. lay bleeding on the floor of a Pomona house Wednesday night, his mother desperately trying to cover the spot on his head where a bullet had hit.

“Don’t cry, mi hijo, don’t cry,” she said.

But as the life in her only child began to drift away, she changed her plea: “Cry. Please, cry!” she begged.

By Thursday morning, Gilbert was dead, another innocent bystander caught in the violent gang rivalries that have plagued Los Angeles County for generations. In Pomona alone, he was the third child gunned down so far this year.

Like the others, he was not the intended target, merely a body in the way of the bullets.

From Long Beach to Watts to Pasadena, indiscriminate gunfire is turning a growing number of innocent people--many of them small children--into victims of geography. Although such shootings are usually intended as retaliations, 20% to 50% of the time someone other than a rival is hit, according to various law enforcement estimates.

The Sheriff’s Department, which serves 2.2 million people in an area encompassing about three-fourths of the county, reported 31 innocent bystanders killed in gang-related shootings in 1989. That number was up from 30 in 1988, 26 in 1987 and 11 in 1986.

Few police departments keep records of victims’ ages, but officers around the county say that children--sleeping on couches, sitting in cars, riding bikes--are increasingly being felled by random bullets.

“I think at one time there was an unwritten code that in retaliation you do not hit the family,” said Ernest Castro, director of the Los Angeles County Probation Department’s specialized gang supervision program. “It’s my understanding that in some areas, this unwritten code is not being complied with. They’re getting more bold and more violent.”

The reasons, say counselors, probation officers and detectives, include the emergence of a new generation of smaller cliques eager to make names for themselves, and the arrival of immigrant gangs without ties to the traditions of longtime Latino gangs.

They also point to the lawlessness engendered by the rock-cocaine trade, the increased firepower of weapons being used and a general sense among many of these youths that the line between right and wrong has been blurred by events around them.

“I think they feel they have nothing left to lose,” said the Rev. Bill Easterling, associate pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Pomona. “They can’t see the value in their own lives, so they can’t see it in any one else’s.”

They didn’t see it in the life of 7-year-old Kanita Hailey, who was fatally shot while playing baseball in Watts last Aug. 2. They didn’t see it in little Frank Fernandez Jr., a 4-year-old Garden Grove boy who was slain Sept. 16 as he headed to a drive-in movie. And they didn’t see it in the 10-year-old Pasadena girl who was wounded by a shower of bullets from a passing car in January while sleeping next to her mother.

In Pomona, random bullets took the life of Daniel Rodriguez, a 7-year-old Little Leaguer gunned down on his front porch Feb. 13. Two months later, a Pomona infant--7-month-old David John Godinez Jr.--was critically wounded in the chest during a drive-by attack.

“A lot of these young gangbangers seem less and less concerned about where their bullets go,” said Pomona Police Lt. Chuck Heilman. “That’s what has us so greatly disturbed. If there’s 15 kids around, they don’t care.”

There were three other kids with Gilbert Perez in the back seat of the 1960s-model Chevrolet Caprice that pulled up to a street curb in northwest Pomona about 11 p.m. Wednesday.

Gilbert’s mother, a former supervisor at an auto parts plant, was next to him. Behind the wheel was the mother of the three other children. They had just gone for hamburgers at a Jack in the Box and were dropping off a friend, a 19-year-old who is believed to be a gang member, police said.

As they sat in the Chevrolet outside the 19-year-old’s house, a compact car drove slowly past, its occupants eyeing them closely. It turned and came back. Police do not know how many people were in the suspects’ car or how many were armed. But they said at least two handguns were used--a .22-caliber and a .380-caliber--and that from six to eight shots were fired.

Gilbert’s mother lunged to shield her son with her body, but a bullet smashed through the windshield and into his head. A fragment cut his mother’s hand. No one else, including the 19-year-old police believe was the intended target, was injured. His identity was not disclosed.

Gilbert’s mother, carried her son into her friend’s house. He lay bleeding on the brown and orange carpet, his mother on her knees struggling to stop the flow from his small head, until an ambulance arrived.

“It was so sad,” said the owner of the home, a 40-year-old woman who asked to be identified only as Senora Ramirez. “He was just a child--her only child. He did nothing to deserve this.”

Gilbert was rushed to Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, but at 5:04 a.m. Thursday he was pronounced dead. Police have made no arrests in the case.

Later Thursday, Ramirez’s eldest son, the male passenger in the car, was back out on the streets with his homeboys, talking about revenge.

“Whoever it was, they’re going to regret it for the rest of their lives,” he said. “There’s a line. You don’t go killing little kids.”