Teen-Ager Slain in Hail of Bullets Fired From Car : Crime: He is gunned down while walking home from a party. Neighbors believe the shooting is a payback by a rival gang.

In a poignant message to his father in May, Johnny Casillas Jr. pleaded for the two to become closer.

“No matter what happens, I love you,” 16-year-old Johnny wrote to his dad on the back of a school picture. “I just wish we could spend more time together.”

Early Saturday morning, all hope of that occurring ended suddenly on a dark street corner.

Johnny--described by family and friends as a diligent student and an extremely athletic person--was gunned down and killed by an unknown number of assailants near the intersection of Oak Street and Central Avenue as he was walking home to his grandmother’s house, Sheriff’s Department officials said.

Friends and relatives said they suspect Johnny was the victim of gang violence, but sheriff’s officials investigating the shooting said Saturday they have not yet determined whether those suspicions are correct.

The youth was struck once in the upper body when a shower of bullets erupted from a passing car at 2 a.m., Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Dan Martini said.

Despite efforts by paramedics to save him as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk, Johnny was pronounced dead on arrival an hour later in the emergency ward at UCI Medical Center in Orange, Martini said.

“He was a good boy,” said his father, John Casillas Sr., 36, of Anaheim, as he sat on the tree-shaded porch of his mother’s Flower Street home and somberly greeted friends and relatives who came to offer condolences.

“He stayed away from drugs and loved sports,” Casillas said.

Martini said that investigators, who interviewed local residents all day on Saturday, have been unable to immediately determine the make and model of the car of the attackers or whether the attackers are members of gangs.

“Investigators are still out there working the case, trying to come up with answers,” Martini said.

But residents said they suspect Johnny Casillas was the victim of a long-simmering feud between the Big Stanton and La Colonia gangs.

Seconds before the shooting occurred, one of Casillas’ relatives received a telephone call from a female who claimed to be with a gang. Lola Perales, Johnny’s cousin, said she received the call to her home shortly after Johnny left a party that she was chaperoning at her residence.

“She said someone was going to get one of our home boys,” Lola Perales said. While the unidentified female taunted Lola Perales, several males in the background of the telephone call chanted “La Colonia,” the name of an Anaheim gang, she said. Seconds after she hung up, Perales heard shots fired.

Sheriff’s investigators were unable to confirm information about the reported telephone call to Lola Perales. Lola Perales had arranged to have her telephone number changed on Saturday for fear of receiving more calls, she said.

Relatives, friends and local gang members said that Casillas was not a member of Big Stanton. However, they said the drive-by shooting was an apparent retaliation for the May death of Rosendo Ibarra, 17, who was shot and killed in Anaheim while talking to his girlfriend on a pay phone.

Three suspects have been arrested in connection with Ibarra’s slaying. Police have said Ibarra’s killing was the result of the dispute between residents of the La Colonia neighborhood in Anaheim and the Big Stanton barrio.

Residents of the Big Stanton barrio said the Ibarra killing has escalated tensions between the two rival Latino gangs.

“Rumor came out after that they were going to shoot someone in Stanton,” said Perales, 40. “They didn’t care who it was.”

Johnny Casillas “wasn’t into all that (gang) stuff,” said a resident, who identified herself only as Gina. “He was just a victim of circumstances.”

On Friday night, Johnny was attending an informal party of about 20 teen-agers. Some of the teen-agers were Johnny’s relatives and some of them acknowledged they are Big Stanton gang members. Johnny decided to leave the party because he “felt tired and wanted to go home,” said Lola Perales’ son, Robert Perales, 17, who said he is a member of the Big Stanton gang.

Casillas, whose father lives in Anaheim, had been living off and on at his grandmother’s Stanton home for the past year, relatives said. His mother died four years ago of an illness.

Casillas had walked only two blocks, however, when a red car sped around the corner. At least one occupant of the car fired five or more shots out the passenger window, witnesses said. An older model Fiat that was between Casillas and the attackers’ car was damaged by five rounds.

It was unclear whether one of the bullets ricocheted off the car and struck the teen-ager or whether more than five shots were fired, Martini said. Most witnesses reported hearing five shots from what sounded like a large-caliber, semiautomatic weapon.

The volley of gunfire woke up residents living in the small neighborhood near Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue. Many rushed outside to see what had happened.

“I was almost asleep in the living room, and I heard this bang, bang, real quick,” said Joe Pallares, 31, who lives three houses from the scene of the shooting. He was one of the first to race to the scene. “I came out quick, but the car was already gone.”

It was then that Pallares discovered Casillas, lying on the dirty sidewalk with a bullet wound in his side. “He was bleeding so badly,” he said. “I knew that he wasn’t going to make it.”

By the time six Sheriff’s Department units arrived at scene, Martini said, about 80 people were milling around the street corner where Casillas was lying. His cousin tried to speak to him, Robert Perales said, but he was unable to describe his attackers.

“There was blood coming out of his mouth, and he was choking,” Robert Perales said. “He couldn’t say anything.”

The crowd, already upset by the shooting, became boisterous and several shoving matches broke between some of Casillas’ friends and relatives and deputies, witnesses said. As the shoving increased and the crowd grew angrier, more units were called in, Martini said.

“They almost had a riot on their hands, man,” Pallares said. At one point, witnesses said, several teen-agers began beating one deputy, forcing him and his partners to retreat momentarily.

Martini said the near-melee was quelled minutes later “when they understood the situation we were in.”

There were no arrests or injuries as a result of the disturbance.

Lola Perales and other mothers in the area lamented that the gangs that have grown up in the neighborhood for several generations have grown increasingly violent. “It wasn’t always this way,” she said.

Her son said he could not remember why the feud with La Colonia began.

Whatever the reason, Lola Perales and other mothers now fear for their children’s lives, and believe that they are prisoners in their own homes.

“We used to be able to sit out here at night,” said one of Pallares’ neighbors, one of several interviewed who asked not to be identified. “We can’t do that anymore. It’s too scary.”

The ongoing street violence has perplexed residents who have watched their quiet barrio change over the years into a neighborhood as besieged by gangs as urban areas of Los Angeles.

“I don’t understand why we are killing each other,” Lola Perales said. “We’re killing our own people. It’s so cowardly.”

Staff writer Tammerlin Drummond contributed to this story.