Food Truck Vendors Wary After Murders

Alarmed by the murders of a five-person catering crew, some San Fernando Valley food truck drivers said Wednesday that they may begin carrying guns to protect themselves.

Despite being robbed twice, caterer Mike Agazaryan said he had not considered carrying a gun until this week’s slayings, which he speculated was the work of robbers.

“If somebody is going to kill me for a couple hundred dollars,” he said, “then I am going to try to kill him first.”

Pacoima vendor Mario Rodas said he and four customers were robbed by two gunmen about a month ago. “This job is very dangerous now,” he said. “There is nothing we can do to protect ourselves. They put a gun to my head. What was I going to do?”

Police said Wednesday that they have yet to establish robbery as the motive for the killings of truck owner Ismael Cervantes Sr., 43; his son Ismael Jr., 13; cook Francisco Gasca, 31, and two brothers, who performed odd jobs, Heriberto and Jesus Sandoval, 16 and 19.

Police found the bodies Tuesday morning by the side of the road in remote La Tuna Canyon, victims of gunshot and stab wounds.

Investigators said they were concentrating on learning more about the victims, whose truck was a popular fixture in a bustling, predominantly Latino neighborhood in North Hollywood.

Detective Mike Mejia said “there’s got to be more than one suspect” because of the number of people required to subdue five victims and hijack Cervantes’ truck Saturday night from its usual place in the 6800 block of Lankershim Boulevard. It was found ransacked and abandoned, with traces of human blood, about 12 blocks away the following afternoon.

Mejia said three or four people have phoned police to say they saw a catering truck on La Tuna Canyon Road, an isolated highway with no commercial area to attract vendors. He said police have yet to confirm the reports, but added, “I doubt that many people would make something like that up.”

Mejia also said investigators hoped to learn more about an incident that occurred about a month ago in which Cervantes’ truck was robbed by four gunmen. Cervantes did not report that crime or an earlier robbery to police to avoid alarming his family, relatives said.

But Mejia said it was premature to focus on robbery or any other possible motive.

“Until we do a complete background on all these victims and on what they were doing prior to this day, any lead that comes in won’t be (treated as) the best one,” Mejia said.

Police have also said they do not yet know where and when the victims were killed. Autopsies were rescheduled for today, a coroner’s spokesman said.

City Councilman Ernani Bernardi on Wednesday proposed posting a $25,000 reward for information leading to conviction of the killers. The council will vote on the motion Tuesday, an aide said.

As word of the deaths spread through the barrios of the northeastern Valley, many veteran food vendors expressed skepticism that the crimes resulted from a street robbery. Police have said a typical night’s proceeds for Cervantes were between $200 to $400.

“Nobody kills five people for that amount of money. It’s crazy,” said Luis Centeno, a North Hollywood food vendor who was a friend of Cervantes.

“But I am worried,” Centeno conceded. “There are bad people in the streets. You have to work in the street. I watch my mirror, man.”

Street vending is a tough, competitive business that has led to occasional fights, sometimes with guns drawn, over a good location, said Deputy City Atty. Alice Hand. But she and other sources familiar with the industry said they were not aware of any organized turf wars between food truck operators in Los Angeles.

Most independent, mom-and-pop caterers such as Cervantes are Latino immigrants whose street work is similar to that of street vendors in their native countries, said Andrew Willing, an attorney for the Independent Catering Truck Owners Assn.

Food vending “is probably one of the last great hopes for the small businessman who wants to start on a shoestring and build himself into a businessperson of some prominence,” said another industry attorney, Phil Greenwald.

Cervantes and his helpers fit that pattern. The Sylmar resident emigrated about 20 years ago from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, worked as a restaurant cook and saved his money to buy a catering truck, relatives said. Gasca, the cook, also came from Guanajuato seven or eight years ago and was planning a trip back next year to see his mother for the first time since coming here, said his girlfriend, Victoria Sotomayor.

On Wednesday, Filiberto Figueroa, a friend of Gasca, canvassed merchants and passersby on Lankershim Boulevard with his photo, trying to raise money to send his body back to Mexico.

“Everybody has heard about this,” Figueroa said, “and everybody is giving some.”

Times staff writers Julio Moran and John Johnson contributed to this story.