13-Year-Old Slain in Drive-By Shooting : Gangs: Authorities say the East Los Angeles youngster’s life was probably snuffed out as a result of turf warfare.

An eighth-grader walking home from school in East Los Angeles was shot to death by gunmen who fired at him from a passing car Thursday, in an incident that authorities said probably was the result of gang warfare.

The boy, Adolfo Aguirre, 13, fell dying onto the sidewalk as children and fellow students from Belvedere Junior High School gathered around. A bullet had hit him in the upper arm and passed into his chest; he was pronounced dead a short time later at County-USC Medical Center.

Residents along Blanchard Street, where the shooting took place at about 3:30 p.m., said they heard two shots, then looked outside and saw the boy lying in a stream of blood.

One resident told investigators he heard the screeching of car tires right after the shots.

The hilly neighborhood in the City Terrace area is territory for two gangs who residents say regularly fight over turf. Investigators, as well as several teen-agers in the area, said they believed the shooters were from one gang and the victim from the other gang.

“We know it was gangs,” said Sgt. Stuart A. Reed of the sheriff’s Homicide Division, adding that the dead boy had been “identified as an associate of gangs” by the department’s gang unit.

One youngster, perched on a bicycle, described himself as a friend of Adolfo’s and said the young victim had joined the gang only within the last week.

Investigators were seeking as a witness a companion of Adolfo’s who may have been walking with him when the shooting occurred.

Adolfo’s family and neighbors painted a different picture of the boy. They described him as a courteous youngster who had told his mother he wanted to be a policeman and who was preparing to escort his cousin this weekend in a celebration of her 15th birthday, a traditional rite of passage in Latino families.

The boy worked summers with his father, a gardener originally from Mexico, and rarely went out at night, his mother and uncles said.

“He would come home from school every day at 3:30, and he just didn’t leave again,” his mother, Melecia Aguirre, said on the front steps of her apartment, her eyes reddened from crying. “If he had been in a gang, I wouldn’t have had him here, home, every night.”

When Adolfo was shot, one of his classmates ran seven blocks to the apartment building to tell Melecia Aguirre.

“He was nothing more than a victim of the gangsterism. An innocent victim,” said Adolfo’s uncle, Galdino Gomez of Covina, who had arrived to comfort the boy’s mother. “There was never any sign that he was in a gang. If you ask me, it is the innocents who fall.”

Sheriff’s detectives questioned residents of Blanchard Street late Thursday in a search for witnesses. Reed said many people appeared reluctant to speak to investigators out of fear of gang retaliation.

There have been 18 gang murders in East Los Angeles this year, Reed said. While Adolfo’s death stood out because of his young age, the sergeant said it is increasingly common to see younger gang members--even at ages “in the single digits.”