The Drive-By Destruction of a Promising Youngster

Twelve-year-old Pedro Sanchez Hernandez spent the last seconds of his life terrified. Moments before four shots were fired from a white 1987 Toyota truck, his brother Gus shouted for the boy to duck. But before Pedro could run for cover, he was shot in the head and killed instantly.

The police call these kids “mushrooms”--innocent victims, who sprout anywhere. In this case, Pedro happened to be on the same corner where a drug deal had gone sour just moments before.

But instead of settling a street score, a gunman took the life of a quiet boy who wanted to be a teacher.

In reporting this story, I talked to the boy’s family just hours after he was killed. Despite their grief, they tried their best to make visitors to their home feel welcome.

Although all of them had gone without sleep, they offered soda, a chair and searched for photos of Pedro to help explain their loss.

I’ve written stories before about children who get caught in cross-fires. They are, without exception, heart-wrenching.

Gus says his brother had been tagging along with him Aug. 15 on a visit to a friend when the two of them heard somebody yell, “Drive-by!” For the Hernandez brothers and other youths in this central Santa Ana neighborhood, a drive-by warning seems as common as the passing of an ice cream truck.

A week before Pedro’s death, a car had zoomed through the neighborhood, firing shots randomly. Somebody yelled, “Drive-by!” Children all dived for the ground, and nobody was hurt.

On the night Pedro was killed, it was business at usual for both drug dealers and buyers. The dealers lined up along the apartment complexes on Myrtle Street, drinking beer and hanging out. Customers would cruise by and make their purchases.

The pathetic part of this story is the picture that police paint about Pedro’s death. This is what officers allege:

Minutes before the boy came by with his brother, suspect Thomas Trung Nguyen was in the neighborhood. Drug dealers threw beer bottles at him. Nguyen ran back to his truck and pulled away. The dealers continued throwing bottles. One shattered the truck’s tinted rear window, infuriating Nguyen.

Nguyen, according to police, then allegedly handed his .45-caliber semiautomatic to Minh Chi Nguyen and told him to get ready to fire. They raced back to the corner.

By the time the two returned, Pedro and his brother were at the corner. The gunmen, police say, fired the shots and took off. Then they came back to see whether they had hit anybody. They had.

After his arrest, Minh Chi Nguyen told police that he had not meant to hurt anybody. He just wanted to scare those who had thrown bottles, he told investigators.

For Pedro’s mother, Victorina Sanchez, this neighborhood, dominated by drug dealing and violence, was the best she could afford for her five children.

A worker at a plastics factory, Sanchez was told of her youngest child’s death when she finished her 4-to-midnight shift.

When I talked to Sanchez, she had just returned from the funeral parlor. The family could afford only minimal arrangements for Pedro.

During the interview, she remembered how her son loved swimming at a public pool and how eager he was for his 13th birthday in September. “He was very friendly, very sweet,” Sanchez said. “He never asked me for anything except two quarters to go swimming. He never asked me for anything else.”

Before I left, I asked her for a photo of Pedro. She searched frantically in her purse. She had kept a photo of Pedro but had given that to police. Now she did not have one for herself.

When Pedro’s sister found another photo for her, Victorina Sanchez held on to the snapshot of Pedro as if she never wanted to let it go.