Suspected Gang Members Arrested in Slaying of Boxing Champion’s Son

Three suspected members of a Panorama City gang were arrested Friday on suspicion of killing the son of former world featherweight boxing champion Bobby Chacon in a gang confrontation earlier this month, Los Angeles police reported.

Police said Rene Gomez Gallegos, 18, and a 16-year-old boy were arrested at their homes and Nicholas Alfredo Diaz, 18, was taken into custody at a house in Fresno. A fourth suspect, who has not been identified, was still being sought.

Gallegos was identified by police as the gunman who fatally shot Bobby (Chico) Chacon Jr., 17, and injured Arturo Reynoso, 18, after a dispute erupted Oct. 4 in a parking lot outside a Montgomery Ward store in Panorama City.

Police said Gallegos’ family includes two other members involved in gang crime. They said Gallegos’ brother, Cesar, 22, was jailed in July on suspicion of being a sniper who had fired at two police officers from a rooftop in Van Nuys. A 16-year-old cousin--who has a gang symbol tattooed on his chin--is being sought in the drive-by shooting death a month later of a teen-ager he mistook for a member of a rival gang, officers said.

Chacon, who like his father grew up on the hardscrabble streets of Pacoima, and Reynoso were identified by police as gang members.

Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker said Chacon and Reynoso were sitting in a car in the parking lot waiting for a friend who had gone into Montgomery Ward to apply for a job. Four members of a rival gang approached the car on foot and a verbal dispute erupted. Chacon and Reynoso got out of the car and then Gallegos allegedly shot them, Kroeker said.

“The motive, like with so many of these, was a senseless . . . name-calling having to do with what gang” the young men belonged to, he said.

Detective Phil Morritt said Chacon and Reynoso, who remains hospitalized in serious condition, were not the aggressors in the dispute and had no weapons.

The area around the store and nearby Panorama Mall are not known by police to be the “turf” of any specific gang, said Officer Carlos Sanchez, a gang expert who was assigned to investigate the slaying.

Police gave few details of what led to the arrests, but Kroeker said information gathered from witnesses after the shooting helped identify the gang involved. From that point, detectives identified specific suspects after putting together information contained in police gang files and from street sources, he said.

Chacon lived with his grandmother in Pacoima and was a respected athlete who had talked of following his father into the ring. His life was marked by his father’s success in the ring--including the World Boxing Council featherweight and super-featherweight crowns--and tragedies such as his father’s troubles with the law and his mother’s suicide nine years ago.

Bobby Chacon Sr. was put on probation in 1984 after being convicted of beating his second wife. Three years later he was sentenced to six months in jail for violating that probation after investigators found alcohol in his Oroville, Calif., house and a trace of marijuana in his urine.

The elder Chacon, who lives in Mesa, Ariz., could not be reached for comment Friday.

In a news conference announcing the arrests, Kroeker denounced gang violence, which he said is increasing in the San Fernando Valley. Chacon’s killing was the 33rd gang-related homicide in the Valley this year, compared to 31 in all of 1990, police said.

“Our level of violence seems to be growing and the impunity with which these crimes are carried out is absolutely stunning,” Kroeker said.