Victim of Gang Slaying Was From Gardena

A youth who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Lawndale on Monday minutes after school let out has been identified as a Leuzinger High School student who recently joined a Filipino gang, sheriff’s deputies said.

Robert Delgado, 16, of Gardena, who sang in the school’s top choir group since his freshman year, was shot in the head Monday by members of a rival Vietnamese gang as he waited with a group of friends for a ride home, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Milkey.

The shooting, which occurred outside a house on 147th Street about one block from the Leuzinger campus, appeared to be in retaliation for a fistfight earlier in the day in which a large group of Filipino gang members beat up a Vietnamese gang member, Milkey said.

That beating, in turn, was apparently in retaliation for a beating suffered by two Filipino gang members two weeks before, he said.

“(Delgado) was a nice kid; he just joined the wrong group at the wrong time and was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Milkey said.

Three crisis counselors from Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center spent Tuesday at Leuzinger High speaking to students who sang with Delgado in the choir. Members of the Leuzinger Select Chorale will sing at his funeral at St. Jerome’s Catholic Church in Westchester on Monday morning.