Gulf War Soldier on Leave Slain in Drive-By Shooting : Violence: On his first night back, Cesar Gardea, 19, is gunned down in Baldwin Park. A cousin is also killed.

A 19-year-old Army private just back from combat in the Persian Gulf was killed Tuesday in a gang-related, drive-by shooting in Baldwin Park that also left his cousin dead and two neighbors wounded.

Cesar Gardea, on leave after a six-month tour of duty in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, had arrived at his cousin’s house Monday for a homecoming party and Fourth of July celebration this weekend, family members said.

In letters to his girlfriend, who lives on the same stretch of Patritti Avenue on the western edge of town, Gardea told of being a tank driver on the front lines and said he feared for his life.

“He saw the missiles and everything . . . bodies and stuff,” said Lorena Limon, 18. “He told me that he loved me and that he hoped to live through it to come back and see me.”

On his first night back at the Baldwin Park residence where he spent his high school years, Gardea was gunned down in the front yard by suspected gang members in a passing car, sheriff’s investigators said.

“It was kind of like coming home to say goodby,” Limon said.

It was one of at least seven shootings in Los Angeles County Monday night, most of them gang-related. In all, eight people died and three were wounded. For residents of this mostly Latino, working-class corner of Baldwin Park, where one neighbor lowered her American flag to half-staff, there was nothing routine about the grieving.

“This is not good,” said Armando Ortiz, Gardea’s uncle. “This man, or boy, is in action over there, then comes back here and is shot. I think it is more dangerous to be here.”

During Operation Desert Storm, 147 U.S. troops died in combat. Last year in Los Angeles County, there were 1,962 homicides--about 163 a month.

Gardea had been playing billiards with several friends in the back of his cousin’s house, where he intended to stay before returning to a military base in Germany on July 5. Shortly after midnight, as he went to the front yard to say good night to friends, a dark-colored, foreign-made compact car passed by a couple of times, investigators said.

On the third trip, the car’s headlights were turned off and a burst of shots exploded from what sounded like a .45-caliber handgun, relatives said. Gardea, an only child whose mother lives in Reno, Nev., died of multiple chest wounds at 1:21 a.m. at a West Covina hospital.

His cousin, Pablo Paez, 17, who graduated from Sierra Vista High School in Baldwin Park last week, died of chest wounds later that morning. Officers said neither of the young men was affiliated with a gang, but friends and family said Paez dressed like a gang member, although they did not believe he was heavily involved in gang activities.

“He just dressed like a gangster,” said Paez’s cousin, Junior Ortiz, 15, who lives in the City of Commerce. “But that’s it. He had his head straight.”

Two neighbors standing with them were also wounded in the attack. An 18-year-old man was shot in the leg, and a 15-year-old girl was hit in the ankle, but neither was seriously hurt.

No arrests have been made and the suspects have not been identified.

Gardea, who played center for the Sierra Vista High School basketball team, joined the military soon after his graduation in June, 1990. His girlfriend, who is studying law enforcement at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, described him as a fun-loving young man who hoped that the Army would provide direction in his life.

“He really didn’t know much about what he was going to do,” said Limon, adding that the service was a way to “figure out his goals and stuff.”

His first stop was Ft. Benning, Ga., where Gardea did his basic training with Company E, 4th Battalion, 36th Infantry.

“I am having fun here--it’s very exciting,” he wrote to Limon in a September letter. “We get to shoot just about everything, from rifles to M-60 machine guns to rocket launchers to missiles and hand grenades and grenade launchers.”

In December, he wrote to her from the 21st Replacement Detachment at the Kilborne Kaserne Base in Schwetzingen, Germany, saying he expected to be shipped to the Gulf between Christmas and New Year’s Day. In the meantime, Gardea wrote, he was drinking as much of the strong German beer as he could “because in the Saudi desert there is no beer allowed.”

He included in his letter a small color photo of himself standing erect in dress uniform, face gaunt, blue eyes wide. On his chest were two badges for excellence with grenades and rifles. An American flag hung in the background.

Once in the Persian Gulf, where he was sent to the front lines, the giddiness of his training experiences gave way to the horrors of combat, he said in letters home. He was given a big, heavy “Rambo gun,” and “did a lot of shooting . . . but he didn’t think he hit anybody,” Limon recalled him saying.

“He was scared, very scared of dying,” she said. “He said if he had known he was going to Saudi Arabia, he would never have joined.”

On Tuesday, news crews swarmed around the Paez house, a one-story yellow structure with a few neatly maintained shrubs and a small rosebush out front. The rear window of a car in the driveway had been shattered by one of the shots.

The blood that had been spattered on the sidewalk several hours before had dried.

“You know, for Cesar to go over there, come back in one piece, then have this happen,” said Osvaldo Tejada, 15, a neighbor who grew up with Gardea and his relatives. “It’s a lot of b.s.”

Times staff writer Scott Harris contributed to this story.