Families and Friends Mourn 2 Young Men : Crime: More than 500 people gather at a Saticoy chapel to remember the victims of a drive-by shooting.

Hundreds of grieving friends and relatives poured into Cabrillo Village’s chapel Tuesday to mourn the deaths of two of the chapel’s former altar boys, victims of a weekend drive-by shooting in Saticoy.

Rolando Martinez and Javier Ramirez were killed Sunday morning in a random shooting at a baptism party around the corner from where they lived. Police, who are still looking for the gunmen, say the shooting appears to be gang-related.

More than 500 people gathered Tuesday evening for the open-casket rosary prayer, spilling out of the small wooden Catholic chapel and onto the streets of the tightknit farm worker community on the outskirts of Ventura. The sobs of the mourners were loud enough to be heard across the street.

Father Carl Sutphin read a passage from the Scripture in which Christ reappeared, resurrected, to console a group of women mourning his death. Outside the chapel, the rest of the village appeared deserted. Three Ventura County sheriff’s patrol cars stood guard at the gate.

A funeral Mass for the childhood friends will be held at 10 a.m. today at Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy, followed by burial at Santa Clara Cemetery in Oxnard.

Tuesday afternoon--as neighbors streamed into the victims’ homes to console their families--friends and relatives talked quietly of the young men.

The 20-year-old Martinez, the neighborhood’s big brother, made time between his college studies and his part-time job at a restaurant to take his kid sisters and their friends to the movies. Ramirez, 19, was quiet and reserved, but his sisters remember his loud, heartfelt laughter and the big dreams he shared with his girlfriend, Lisa.

“The last time I saw Rolando he came up to me and gave me a great big hug,” said Martinez’s grandmother, Sebastiana Rodriguez, 65, fighting back tears. “He squeezed me real tight and told me, ‘You are my baby.’ ”

Rolando, the third of Virginia and Jesus Martinez’s five children, always advised his younger siblings to be nice to their mother, whom he adored, and to stay out of gangs.

Virginia, Martinez’s mother, sat in the living room surrounded by her children, holding hands with friends who came to wish her well. She acknowledged her visitors with bows and nods but could hardly speak. A framed picture of Rolando on senior prom night was propped on a table across the room.

“So much pain,” she muttered in Spanish between sobs. “It’s so unfair . . . they must find the criminals . . . I want justice . . . what they did to this family . . . to innocent people . . . “

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” said brother Hector Martinez, 21. “I know some kids did some things, but my brother was never part of” a gang.

Rolando Martinez was studying at Ventura College to become an accountant. In the fall, he planned to transfer to UC Davis and room with Hector. At night he worked as a busboy at a nearby Sizzler restaurant, and he would study long hours before going to bed.

“He said he didn’t want a girlfriend because he would have to get married and he didn’t have time for that. First, he wanted to graduate from college and buy their parents a new house,” said neighbor Manuela Martinez.

Javier Ramirez had just graduated from Buena High School and planned to be a construction worker like his father, Claudio Ramirez, 44. “He wanted to earn some money to get married and buy a house and then go back to studying,” Claudio said. “He was an excellent son. . . . Stayed away from the gang scene and never gave us trouble.”

Like the Martinez family across the street, Javier Ramirez’s relatives received visits all afternoon. For mother Cecilia Ramirez, the pain was more than she could bear. She lay in bed, crying.

In the flower-decked living room under a crucifix, 19-year-old Lisa Gurrola, Ramirez’s girlfriend of more than a year, sat among her slain sweetheart’s family.

“He appeared to be serious, but he was really a lot of fun,” Gurrola said. “He never complained about anything, and he had that look in his face that always made you happy.”

They would get together every weekend and eat at McDonald’s or Super Taco, then go home and watch movies.

“He wanted to travel . . . to Hawaii, to Mazatlan,” said his sister Maribel, 15. He loved vampire movies and playing with his younger brother and sister, ages 6 and 2. “He would pretend he was mad and chase them around, and when he caught them, they would all laugh.”

It is Ramirez’s laughter that his friends and sisters remember most vividly--a thundering, disarming roar that would erupt unexpectedly, provoked by things most people would consider trivial. “He would be watching the vampire movie and all of the sudden, wham! The big laugh,” said sister Sonia Ramirez, 14.

“We all start laughing with him but then we stop. He goes on laughing and laughing, until he starts coughing, he’s laughing so hard.”