Violence Invades a Once-Quiet Neighborhood in San Juan Capistrano : Crime: The Los Rios district sits squarely in the middle of troubled areas. The stabbings and robberies have residents living in fear.

It started as a dog barking in the night, then another and another, the noise echoing its way down Ramos Street from the corner of Los Rios Street until Scott Perguson couldn’t help but notice.

Just outside his window, a group of young men moved quickly down the street, headed for the creek bed nearby. Then came police cars, five in all. Bright flashlights in hand, the officers searched the empty lot next door to Perguson’s home.

“I didn’t know what happened until I read it in the paper,” Perguson said later. “Somebody got stabbed on our street.”

In the normally quiet Los Rios district, the oldest neighborhood in this 200-year-old community, stabbings should be big news. But not lately.

Violence has begun to spill onto the dark Los Rios streets.

“We’ve had some real bandits running amok out there. It’s out of control,” said Lt. Dan Martini of the Sheriff’s Department, who acts as police chief here. “The result is we’ve got a neighborhood living in fear.”

The recent incidents have not escaped the notice of City Council members, two of whom are Los Rios residents.

“We’re very concerned,” said Councilman Gil Jones, who along with colleague Jeff Vasquez lives and works in Los Rios. “We’ve always had night traffic on our streets, but never violence like this.”

The most recent incident occurred Jan. 28 at about 2:30 a.m., a time when most Los Rios residents are asleep. A group of five men confronted Ramiro Escamillo, 29, of San Juan Capistrano near the intersection of Ramos and Los Rios streets, pistol-whipped him and stabbed him in the side.

About half an hour later, police believe, the same group attacked another San Juan man, Aurelio Alcaraz, 24, on Paseo Carolina, located across Del Obispo Street from the Los Rios area. He was stabbed several times in the chest and back, wounds that collapsed one of his lungs. Police say a total of $20 was taken in the two incidents.

Both Escamillo and Alcaraz survived. Alcaraz underwent emergency surgery at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

On Jan. 26, a newspaper deliveryman was threatened by a group of men with a knife. They took his money, all of $7, and let him go. Two weeks ago another San Juan man was stabbed and his partner clubbed with a baseball bat. These incidents occurred in neighborhoods next to the Los Rios district, but the entire area takes up only several city blocks.

What concerns those in Los Rios is that their neighborhood sits squarely between the troubled areas: the Capistrano Villas, another area called the “Casitas,” and Trabuco Creek, a wide, mostly dry creek bed that serves as a hide-out for transients and illegal immigrants and a protected boulevard in and out of town. People on their way to either of the densely populated condominium areas or the creek bed often pass through Los Rios, often late at night.

“The bottom line is we’re in the middle, we’re the avenue,” said Bill Hardy, a Los Rios property owner and chairman of the Los Rios Review Committee. “We don’t really have any internal problems, except for the people passing through.”

Local attorney Stephen Rios, who lives in a restored adobe in the Los Rios district, has been in the neighborhood all his life. His children are ninth-generation Californians.

“Old Los Rios is safe, it’s just the neighboring areas that concern me,” Rios said. “There are a tremendous number of undocumented people in the area.”

It is those who pass through late at night who are the ones most often victimized by the armed bandits, said Tony Alarcon, whose family also has lived here for generations.

“I hear them walking by at all hours of the night,” he said. “These are people who work downtown at night, in the restaurants or the businesses. They get paid in cash and people know that. Jobs are scarce, and we have some very desperate people around here.”

Police have responded by beefing up their presence in Los Rios and neighboring areas at night, Martini said.

“We’ve basically decided to saturate the area,” he said. “I’ll use every car I have available if I have to.”